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CURED! 

By 

Brian 

Borii 

Dunne 




'Yet, in spite of it all, I am CURED!— Cured of my illness 
and cured of my cures." 



CURED! 

The 70 Adventures of a 
Dyspeptic 



By 

BRIAN BORU DUNNE 

Foreword by 

H. G. WELLS 



With cartoons by Hugh Doyle and 
cover design by Enrico Monetti 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



.I\S3 



Copyright, 1914, by 
Brian BorO Dunne 



NOV 20 1914 



Permission has been kindly granted by 
the Editors of Collier's for the publication 
of such " Cures " as have appeared in 
that National Weekly. 



CLA388471 



Dedicated 

to 

Mrs. Cabot Ward 

Whom I Have Often Admired Through 

Properly Adjusted Glasses 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Yet in Spite op it All, I am CURED!— 
Cured of My Illness and Cured of My 
Cures." Frontispiece ^ 

"The Tube Descended Slowly Like a Large 

Cork Into a Small Bottle." Facing page 21 ^ 

"In About Ten Minutes I Thought Fire- 
works With Revolving Wheels Had Been 
Set Off in the Epigastrium." Facing page 37 " 

"I Was Soon Sweating Like a Stevedore." 

Facing page 44 

"The Custom House Officials, With Those 
X-ray Eyes of Theirs, Saw That I Was 
Worried About Something." Facing page 55 

"When He Found He Had Good Purchase 
Power, He Pressed. It Was Like a Pile- 
driver Coming Down." Facing page 102^ 

"Jenkins Told the Class to Listen to My 
Stomach, and at Once a Whole Battery 
of Stethoscopes Were Thrown Over the 
Gastric Border." Facing page 211 

"Out in the Streets a Newsboy Offered 
Me an 'Extra.' I Embraced Him as I 
Gave Him a Dollar. 'I am Cured at Last,' 
I Said by Way of Explanation, as He 
Seemed Stunned With Surprise," . Facing page 226 "' 

(7) 



FOREWORD 

By H. G. Wells 

MY friend, George Gissing, told me, long 
ago in Italy, of a youthful exile from 
America whom he had met in Siena, ill, 
lonely, hard-up and invincibly cheerful, named 

Brian Boru Dunne. 

I have never met B. B. D., but I have the 
vividest impression of him from G/s descrip- 
tion, and now here he is to hand again after a 
lapse of thirteen years with a manuscript shin- 
ing with cheerfulness and telling of years of 
unbroken ill health. He has been through 
seventy cures (70 cures) — How G. would 
have rejoiced over him! — and he emerges 
cured and with not merely wisdom for all who 
have to do with doctors, but a whole flood of 
illumination upon the difficult problem of how 
to be happy though sick. 

Good luck to his book, a real contribution to 
the difficult art of living ! 

(9) 



CURED! 

THE SEVENTY ADVENTURES OF 
A DYSPEPTIC 

CHAPTER I 

The Wet Sheet Pack — Country Hotels — 
Mountain Air — Salt Air — The Lazy Life 
— Salt Baths at Home — Sulphur Water — 
Stomach Baths — Light Work, and Pe-ru-na. 

I TOOK in all just seventy cures for that dread 
malady, nervous dyspepsia. But I did not 
start out to be a cure collector. It was not 
deliberately that I embarked on so perilous a career. 
Nor did curiosity lure me on from cure to cure. 
Never was there, perhaps, a more sincere, a more 
pathetic seeker after health ; never was there a more 
faithful believer in the infallibility of the medical 
profession. Yet, in spite of it all, I am CURED !— 
cured of my illness and cured of my cures. I shall 
tell my plain, unvarnished tale and give you the 
benefit of my experiences, hoping to fulfil Mr. Wells' 
prediction of imparting "wisdom for all who have 
to do with doctors." 

(11) 



12 CURED 



First of all I went to an infirmary. 

"Have you any pain in your stomach?" asked 
the doctor, who looked like Kipling. 

"Stomach ?" Where had I heard that word 
before? Was it in the patent medicine ads I 
saw in the newspapers? Still I hesitated to 
answer. 

"Do you know where your stomach is?" per- 
sisted the medical man. He was plainly per- 
plexed. 

"No, I'm not quite sure," I answered feebly. 

"I guess you haven't much pain there — 
otherwise you'd know it," retorted the doctor. 
Then he thumped me on the chest, and com- 
manded me: "Say ninety-nine — ninety-nine." 
He requested me to breathe "naturally" and lis- 
tened to my chest with rubber tubes attached to 
a little rubber cup which he kept prowling 
around from one lung to the other. The exami- 
nation over, he said : "You need some wet sheet 
packs with rest." He added that he would 
speak to the house doctor and the head nurse. 
He left me. 

And then I rested — between packs. It was a 
petite, brown-eyed nurse who "packed" me, 
scolding me when I gasped as she pasted the 
wet, icy sheets around me. "They are to make 



CURED 13 

you sleep soundly," she whispered in explana- 
tion. In the day time a great Juno of a nurse, 
with a Sphinxic smile made me swallow an 
amber-colored fluid which tasted like unripe 
persimmons. I later ascertained it was called 
"nux vomica." This Juno also gave me lessons 
in what she called "hospital etiquette." I was 
forbidden to ask questions about medicines and 
diseases and to walk around with a thermome- 
ter in my mouth. How I yearned to get out of 
that infirmary, with its restrictions! Still, 
many of the nurses were decidedly pretty. 

I had made a long, brave fight to escape that 
infirmary. For months I had worked as a re- 
porter on the Baltimore Sun. Finally the late 
hours, the irregular and hurried meals, the 
worry over scoops and the hurry — hurry — of 
the metropolitan newspaperman's life began to 
tell on me. I felt an all-gone sensation at what 
I later ascertained was the "pit" of my stomach. 
I was terribly weak from knees to ankles and 
my heart acted queerly at times. I was in a 
fever of excitement. Then one night — in June, 
on the very eve of my vacation, as I was pass- 
ing the infirmary my heart began to thump at 
a terrible rate. Thinking I was about to die, I 



14 CURED 

rushed into the infirmary screaming for a 
doctor. 

After two weeks of the wet sheet packs and 
the amber fluid I prevailed on the house doctor 
and my family physician, Dr. Dorr (of course, 
I give fictitious names to physicians in this nar- 
rative), to let me try life at a country hotel. I 
had read much about the health-giving country 
life. Two more weeks found me still a nervous 
wreck and Dr. Dorr sent me to the mountains. 
"Good air makes good blood, and good blood 
makes good nerves/' he declared. I returned 
to the city far from fit. Then Dr. Dorr sent 
me to the seashore to try salt air and an occa- 
sional dip. I did not improve. 

"You are in a very nervous state/' said the 
doctor. "You will get well by learning to grow 
lazy." It was decided that I resign from the 
paper and spend a year on a plantation in 
Balmy Alabama. 

That night as I was leaving Baltimore "on 
the midnight choo-choo for Alabam' " I tossed 
in my Pullman berth while traveling men and 
others snored soundly and serenely around me. 
Then I suddenly realized that from a strong, 
healthy young man (I was but 23), I had been 
made an invalid. I resolved to spare no effort 



CURED 15 



or expense to regain my former buoyant health. 

It required but a few meals from the frying 
pan of Balmy Alabam' to reveal to me the pre- 
cise location of my stomach. The fried food — 
everything that came on the table had a veneer 
of grease — -produced many symptoms of 
marked distress in the "epigastrium." I grew 
more and more nervous, until I was positively 
hysterical. Dr. Young came to see me. He 
was a pleasant looking chap, with an energetic 
air. He whipped out a needle, sterilized the end 
of it with a match, and jabbed it into my arm. 

"Ouch!" I exclaimed. "Why did you do 
that?" 

"It is the duty of a physician to relieve pain," 
Dr. Young replied. 

In a few seconds I grew drowsy. I forgot 
the fried ham, the fried eggs, the fried mush, 
the golden biscuits loaded with baking soda, 
the black molasses of fermenting propensities. 
I felt happy, contented, soothed. I fell into a 
deep slumber. It was my first hypodermic. 

The next morning I awoke at nine with a 
champagne headache and no Seltzer to relieve 
it. I walked with difficulty to the office of Dr. 
Young, for advice. He said: "I reckon you 
have acid dyspepsia." He wrote out a prescrip- 



16 CURED 

tion for some dyspepsia tablets, remarking, 
"these will digest anything/' They ought to 
have been powerful, for they cost $1 for a 
small bottle. I felt better for a couple of days 
and then I began to suffer with dyspepsia, 
though I didn't know what kind. 

The druggist suggested I try some dyspepsia 
tablets at 50 cents a box. I took them, but they 
were helpful for only a day. Dr. Young was 
then consulted. "You had better take salt 
baths at home — one every morning and one 
every evening," he advised. I purchased a huge 
sack of salt, for Dr. Young had assured me 
that I should take them "as salty as possible." 
I bathed in a solution which would have made 
the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea look like 
distilled water in comparison. Soon I got re- 
sults — my skin began to peel off ! Yet my dys- 
pepsia stuck to me. 

I returned to Dr. Young, who advised me to 
try the sulphur spring fourteen miles distant. 
"I have never known any dyspeptic to drink 
that water without marked benefit, ,, he declared 
with fine emphasis. 

Dr. Martin Gleason, surnamed "Doc," was 
in charge of the springs. He was tall, emaci- 
ated, with fish-like eyes an3 a complexion of a 



CURED 17 



man suffering with gall stones. I was amazed 
to hear him say that sulphur water had 
"cured" him. Of what, indeed? He looked as 
though he were about to die of a "complication 
of disorders," to use the polite journalistic term. 

Dr. Gleason explained that he once had a 
very chronic case of dyspepsia, but the sulphur 
water had made it vanish. He advised me to 
drink the water as it bubbled up before the 
"precious gases escaped." 

I followed his directions, drinking pitchers 
of the liquid, which looked like olive oil and 
smelt like over-ripe eggs. The only noticeable 
effect was a loud splashing sound when I 
walked up or down stairs. 

After ten days of the guzzling and splashing 
I grew so weak that it seemed certain sulphur 
water was not needed in my case. I returned 
to the village to consult Dr. Young. He lis- 
tened to my sad story and seemed much disap- 
pointed, but certainly not more so than I. He 
finally declared: "I do not know what else to 
recommend." 

I returned to my boarding house in a state of 
deep dejection. The village school principal, a 
fat, genial creature, tried to cheer me up. He 
had a perfect digestion and rosy cheeks that I 



18 CURED 

envied. He said that even if I had not been 
improved by the dyspepsia tablets, salt baths 
and sulphur water, there was yet hope. He re- 
minded me of "Doc" Munion. The principal 
admitted, however, that he thought he had lost 
his wife for lack of a good doctor in that village. 
This was not very encouraging news to me. 
Yet he insisted on my consulting an older phy- 
sician, Dr. Plunkett by name. "This fellow," 
he said, "may have less palaver than the 
younger man, but he has more science." 

Dr. Plunkett was big and burly, but sympa- 
thetic in his voice. He pressed on my stomach 
and remarked that it was doubtless "dilated" 
on account of its "atonic" condition. This ail- 
ment he denned as "atonic dyspepsia," or weak- 
ness of the stomach walls. I told him Dr. 
Young had declared I had acid dyspepsia. "I 
think you lack acid," he replied. "Do you think 
I have cancer of the stomach?" I exclaimed 
in alarm, remembering Napoleon's terrible 
malady. 

Dr. Plunkett assured me that I had no symp- 
toms of cancer; my body was too well nour- 
ished for that. "At your age the stomach walls 
can easily regain their tone," he added cheer- 
fully. 



CURED 19 

I took all the medicines Plunkett ordered. 
Some were so ropy they could have been cut 
with scissors. I grew weaker and more nerv- 
ous. "We ought to get results soon!" said 
Plunkett encouragingly. I did not improve. 
After three days, Plunkett frowned and an- 
nounced that my stomach would have to be 
"washed." 

I informed Dr. Plunkett that I took sponge 
baths every day and that my stomach had not 
been neglected ; that I had even taken salt baths. 
Dr. Plunkett laughed. "The stomach bath I 
wish you to take is an internal one ; it will wash 
all the mucus from the walls of your stomach. 
That's why those medicines of mine couldn't 
act. Too much mucus on the walls of the 
stomach." 

He drove me to his office, where we met an- 
other doctor named Plimhimmon, of dudish 
appearance. Dr. Plimhimmon moved around 
the village in a barouche drawn by two fine 
horses. I had heard he charged $10 for night 
visits. He must have been a scientific man, 
with real magnetic powers, to extract such a fee 
from the patients in that place. "I have brought 
the doctor to help give the stomach bath as he 
is bright on the work," said Plunkett. 



20 CURED 



Dr. Plimhimmon had little to say about the 
work which he so well understood. Dr. Plun- 
kett tried to be cheery, using a phrase I had 
heard at the hospital : "Oh, it won't be so bad." 
He took out of a drawer a long rubber tube 
which resembled a snake. I suppose this tube 
was four or five feet long and it was certainly 
bigger around than a lead pencil. It had a 
funnel, of rubber too, at one end. Dr. Plunkett 
said that I would have to swallow that tube 
eighteen inches. I did not believe it possible. 
He explained that the little end of the tube had 
to reach the "pit" of the stomach. He would 
then pour water down the funnel-end of the 
tube and siphon it out into a basin. In this way, 
he explained, the stomach would not only be 
washed but scrubbed out. 

I must admit I did not relish the idea of a 
rubber tube diet, especially when it had to be 
rammed down the throat. Dr. Plunkett ad- 
vanced with the rubber tube and put one end 
into my mouth. My, what a time I had trying 
to take the first swallow ! I would get the rub- 
ber tube as far as my tonsils, whereupon my 
throat would protest so violently that the tube 
could go no farther. It was ten thousand times 
more ticklish than a feather. Finally, Dr. 



CURED 21 



Plunkett, beads of perspiration on his forehead 
and his hands trembling, put some glycerine on 
the end of the tube. Then he tried to slide it 
clown. He made me hold back my head as 
though I were going to gargle, and then helped 
me shove it down. The tube descended slowly, 
like a large cork into a small bottle. I thought 
I was choked. Tears flowed from my eyes as 
my throat arched and flexed in dismay. The 
tube kept descending and inch by inch I grew 
sicker and sicker. 

Dr. Plimhimmon watched the operation with 
undisguised curiosity. He assisted in holding 
me up as the tube went down. Suddenly Dr. 
Plunkett shouted: "Stop!" Ah, we had reached 
the little white ring around the tube which in- 
dicated that eighteen inches of its horrible, 
snaky self had been gulped down. The tube- 
ramming operation was over. I did not feel 
the tip of the tube reach the "pit" of the stom- 
ach, but Dr. Plunkett said it had gone down 
eighteen inches, "and that is enough." 

Then the real work began. Holding the fun- 
nel above my head, Dr. Plunkett poured a cup 
of lukewarm water down my throat, or rather 
down the tube down my throat. I heard a rum- 
bling sound like a Victrola getting into action 



22 CURED 

for a turkey trot. Then there were more gur- 
gling sounds, like a jug being filled up. Sud- 
denly the water rose to the surface of the fun- 
nel, filled the rubber cup and splashed all over 
the floor. The stomach evidently did not take 
kindly to the treatment. It seemed to wriggle 
like a dog refusing a bath. I wriggled, too, 
keeping Plunkett and Plimhimmon as busy as 
boys holding snakes. 

Dr. Plunkett noted that a pint or more of 
water had made its descent and then he tried to 
"siphon" it into a basin, dropping the funnel 
below "sea-level/' But no water came out ! 

"That is strange!" he murmured. 

"Very strange !" echoed Plimhimmon. 

"Well, we shall have to pour more water 
down!" said Plunkett. 

"Yes, more water !" chirped Plimhimmon. 

By Jove, they did pour more water down, 
Dr. Plunkett holding the rubber funnel above 
my head! There was the rumbling sound of 
rushing waters. Then Dr. Plunkett dashed the 
funnel into the basin. But there was "nothing 
doin\" The water must have remained in the 
stomach. Or had it evaporated? 

"That is very strange," said Plunkett, mop- 
ping his steaming face. 



CURED 23 

"Very strange, indeed," mused Plimhimmon, 
stepping around as brisk as a sparrow. 

"Too damn strange," I thought and tried to 
mutter, but I could not articulate a word with 
that garden hose clogging my throat. So I 
made a sign for a pencil, waving my fingers as 
though I were writing. Dr. Plunkett gave me 
his prescription pad and a pencil. Resting the 
pad on the medico's broad hand, I wrote : "This 
is not strange, but strangling. When am I to 
be free?" 

Dr. Plunkett read my message and said he 
would try only once more. He poured down 
more water ; gave it a few seconds to reach the 
"pit" of the stomach, and then attempted the 
siphon process. But nothing came out. I felt 
I should burst if they poured any more water 
down. 

"Ah, it's dilatation — more than I expected," 
murmured Plunkett, explaining his way out of 
the difficulty. "A good deal of dil-a-ta-tion." 

"Yes, a good deal of dil-a-ta-tion," repeated 
Plimhimmon like a parrot. 

Then Plunkett gave the hoisting signal and 
I pulled up the rubber snake, all nature yearn- 
ing to help me disgorge. 

"You had a good deal of mucus in your 



24 CURED 



stomach, young man," said Plunkett with a 
smile. "That's why those medicines of mine 
failed to act." 

"I now have a good deal of water in there," 
I replied angrily. "Do you hear it splash ?" I 
shook myself to let the medicos hear it, but no 
one listened. Dr. Plunkett was busy washing 
the rubber tube and Plimhimmon was examin- 
ing the instrument of torture with complacency 
and interest. "About how much do they cost, 
Doctor?" he asked. "Oh, a dollar and a half," 
replied Plunkett, breezily. "H-m-m-m," said 
Plimhimmon, "I think I shall get one." 

I was sure Plimhimmon had never seen a 
stomach tube before, and I hoped that I would 
never see one again. Dr. Plunkett plainly 
showed his surprise that the expensive labora- 
tory of Plimhimmon was not already supplied 
with a stomach tube, especially as he had pro- 
nounced Plimhimmon as being "bright on the 
work." 

Dr. Plunkett drove me home and wished me 
a good night's rest. He said that improvement 
would be noticed from that day on provided 
that I continued his tonics. I felt worse from 
day to day. I worried not a little over the dis- 
covery the stomach tube had made — that I had 



CURED 25 

dil-a-ta-tion of the stomach walls, as proved by 
the water refusing to siphon out. 

I should have been saved this anxiety had I 
known that the fault was not with the stomach, 
but with the manipulations of the men of sci- 
ence, who were so impressed with that little 
white ring on the tube that they failed to realize 
that in my case eighteen inches was insufficient 
to reach the "pit" Had I swallowed the tube an 
inch or more, the tube would have touched the 
water level and the siphon action would have 
ensued. 

Seeing that I made no improvement by the 
tonic method, or the stomach-washing perform- 
ance, Dr. Plunkett counseled me to try some 
light work, such as keeping chickens. He said 
that New York brokers had been restored to 
health by the chicken occupation. I moved to 
a still smaller village to try the light work. I 
purchased many chickens for my little ranch, 
but, alas, I cannot say that I "kept chickens !" 
They were a wild lot of hens that refused to be 
cooped up. They flew away or were devoured 
by opossums. 

And then I read of Pe-ru-na. It was a won- 
der-working medicine. I was well impressed 
with the fine picture on the cover of the booklet 



26 CURED 



describing this great tonic, which seemed suit- 
able for almost any ill. I bought a bottle and 
sampled it right away. The first dose re- 
minded me of the hypodermic brand of happi- 
ness; the second showed me a way to make a 
million dollars; and the third — it made me 
ready to buy a railroad ! 

The Pe-ru-na charm soon wore off and some 
of my friends warned me that I had been ex- 
perimenting with "booze" of the rankest sort. 

Robbed of Pe-ru-na's uplifting influence, I 
experienced a decided reaction. I grew very 
weak and irritable. My eyes began to pain me, 
and my head felt as though a band of steel were 
tightened around it. Dr. Snodgrass, the vil- 
lage medico, was summoned. He assured me 
that I was swallowing a good deal of air, add- 
ing to my stomach misery. He said that I had 
some kind of throat trouble and that he would 
like me to take a whiff of chloroform "to ease 
up them throat muscles." Thoroughly alarmed, 
I swore he would never chloroform me. Then 
he suggested a hypodermic, saying: "I believe 
it is the duty of a doctor to relieve pain and then 
build the patient up." On my declining this 
treatment, he wrote out a prescription. "Bud," 
he said in a fatherly tone, "this is for a cerebro- 



CURED 27 

spinal tonic and will do you powerful good 
. . . . in time/' 

He called on me from day to day. His tonics 
were no more health-giving than those of 
Plunkett. Finally, I asked Snodgrass : "What 
do the people do down here when they become 
desperately ill?" 

"Oh, they just die/' he replied, smiling as 
cheerfully as though he were the village under- 
taker as well as its doctor and druggist. 

That settled it. I should get out of that 
country and get out in a hurry! I was getting 
malaria. My tongue looked like a door mat. 
Snodgrass admitted that the village was in the 
malarial zone. 

And so it came to pass that toward the end 
of July I was traveling to Denver, seeking a 
new doctor, a new clime and a new cure. 



CHAPTER II 

Mile up in the Air — Milk Diet — California 
Wine — Meat and Water — Duodenitis Tablets. 

DR. KIRKENDALL called on me at the 
hospital in Denver. He looked like Bis- 
marck and was quite as gruff. 

"What is the matter with you?" he asked in 
zinc-like tones. I told him that I had atonic 
dyspepsia, dilatation of all, or most, of the walls 
of the stomach, malaria, throat trouble, and a 
cerebrospinal disorder for which I had been 
given a tonic. 

"Where did you learn all these things?" he 
snapped. 

"From the doctors in Alabama," I replied. 
In a commanding voice he ordered me to take 
off my shirt so that he could examine my chest 
and stomach. He made me count "one, two, 
three," instead of "ninety-nine" as at the in- 
firmary, and then he pressed on my liver and 
stomach, saying every few moments: "Does 
that hurt you?" Then he asked: "How long is 
it since your nose bled?" The examination 

(28) 



CURED 29 

over, Dr. Kirkendall turned to the nurse, say- 
ing, "Give this man but eight ounces of milk 
every two hours." He departed. 

The nurse was not particularly good to look 
at. She was a tall creature with a hatchet face. 
She was as different from the little black-eyed 
damsel who had "packed" me, as night is from 
day. I found out afterwards that she had been 
unhappily married. I could easily understand 
a man's difficulty in getting along with her. I 
begged for food, with tears in my eyes. The 
Denver air gave me a monstrous appetite, but 
to no avail. Nothing but a glass of milk every 
two hours. I saw Kirkendall, and told him my 
troubles. He was most unsympathetic. "What 
do you suppose we have nurses for?" he 
sneered. "You have bossed every physician 
you have had, but this time you will not have 
your own way, young man." I told him that I 
had obeyed physicians implicitly except when 
they wished to chloroform me ! 

I found that vinegar catches no flies, so I be- 
came cheerful. Every time Kirkendall came 
near my bed, I exclaimed: "This cow diet is 
great, Doctor — simply great." Kirkendall be- 
gan to grin and said something about a "light 
diet in a few days." 



30 CURED 

The life at the hospital was rather trying and 
I found out that there is no truth in the proverb, 
"Misery loves company." Still, there were 
bright moments, and I had to laugh every time 
I heard one irritable patient tell Kirkendall, 
when he asked him how he was: "I feel just 
like a piece of raw beef, Doctor !" 

After ten days I was allowed to sit up and 
eat crackers with my milk. In a few more days 
I was out. "Take these powders," said Kirken- 
dall, "and live on milk and crackers for the next 
five or six months." He refused to accept any 
payment for his services. I was convinced I 
had met a very honest physician, and I hoped, 
a scientific one. 

I followed Dr. Kirkendall's advice and began 
the milk cure on a dairy farm in Utah. I stuck 
to it for several months, gaining in weight, but 
not in strength. I did not take much exercise 
as I found I felt better lying down most of the 
time. I drank a gallon and a half to two gal- 
lons of milk a day. Soon I noticed that my old 
enemy, fermentation, began to renew his at- 
tacks. I felt great distress, despite the powders 
Kirkendall had prescribed. At times my stom- 
ach seemed blown up; at others, there was a 
shooting pain, which made an excursion over to 



CURED 31 

the cardiac region. I was in a bad way. Then 
a minister came to my rescue. 

He said that he had been cured of both dys- 
pepsia and St. Vitus' dance by drinking Califor- 
nia claret. He pointed out to me that Pawlow, 
a great Russian scientist, had made experi- 
ments on dogs, which proved conclusively that 
the acid of w T ine aids digestion. I ordered a 
cask of the claret at once. 

I discarded the milk and took the wine. I 
dipped crackers into it like the Three Mus- 
keteers we read of in Dumas. I began to feel 
happy again. I was making millions and buy- 
ing railroads. The claret was almost as cheery 
as Peruna — and cost less! After a few days, 
unmistakable symptoms indicated to me that I 
had not yet found the real cure for my misery. 
So I consulted the nearest physician, Dr. 
George Wetherly Bump. He was well named 
for he looked like a bump on a log. He was a 
little toad of a man, with bulging, inquiring 
eyes. He gazed at my tongue, took my pulse 
and said "Gee Whittaker !" He asked me how 
old I was, and then said in sepulchral tones : 

"Young man, you are beginning early !" 

"Beginning what ?" I asked in surprise. 

"Why, booze fighting !" 



32 CURED 

Bump had smelled the claret. I suppose I 
did exhale aromas of a California vineyard. 
"Yes, sir," continued Bump, "you are just reek- 
ing with wine. You must cut it out!" I tried 
to explain. "No minister ever told you that," 
he snorted, and waved his hand. "You can't 
fool us physicians, my boy, you can't fool us." 
I left him. 

I walked around the city and spying a book- 
store I entered it. I was perplexed, disap- 
pointed and irritated. In this condition I 
thought it best to read. I picked up a book 
which gave me a thrill. It was entitled, "Key 
to Health." I bought it at once and took it 
back to the dairy farm. I stayed up all night 
reading it. 

I found an article on fermentation which 
greatly interested me. An Ohio physician, 
named Salisbury, was quoted as saying that 
starch is poison. Bread, said Salisbury, is a 
very dangerous thing to eat. Instead of being 
the staff of life, it is the staff of death. 

Here was a solution of my troubles! I had 
been eating crackers; they contained much 
starch. Dr. Salisbury restricted his patients to 
raw meat and water. Nothing more. The 
value of meat as a diet was harped upon. The 



CURED 33' 



writer of the article stated that the vegetarians 
or non-meat eaters did not have a leg to stand 
on; that certain vegetarian nations like the 
Turks were ferocious, immoral and unspeak- 
able. 

I decided to give this theory a try-out. I quit 
the milk as well as the fermenting starch gran- 
ules in a wink. I took to meat and water. 

The fermentation symptoms promptly ceased. 
I blessed the name of Salisbury. Of course, 
meat lacked bulk, but I made up for the defi- 
ciency by swallowing a lake of water. 

I improved at first, but after ten days of this 
meat and water diet I noticed extreme weak- 
ness. I could hardly climb a flight of stairs. I 
began to have my doubts about meat being the 
staff of life. Thoroughly alarmed, I deter- 
mined to consult some good physician to find 
out what to eat and what to drink. 

I took great precautions in the selection of 
the new medical adviser. It was too serious a 
matter to be decided hastily. I consulted sev- 
eral lawyers, telling them I was a stranger in 
their city and a very sick man ; that I had an 
interesting stomach, and it needed scientific 
treatment of the most up-to-3ate kind. 

One of the most prominent lawyers recom- 



34 CURED 

mended me to consult Dr. Keating. 'The best 
people go to him/' said this legal light. 

I found Dr. Keating's house quite a hand- 
some establishment. Evidently Keating had 
done well among "the best people." I won- 
dered if this man would charge me big fees. 

I found Keating in a beautifully furnished 
office. He was a man of middle age with a long 
black beard and great broad hands, which 
looked like boxing gloves when he closed his 
fists. He greeted me cordially and his eyes 
flashed with interest and pleasure when I told 
him that prominent lawyers had recommended 
me to consult him. He asked me my symptoms, 
and I rushed through them like a school boy 
saying his lesson when he knows it well. I told 
Keating that I had been treated by a number of 
physicians, not only with consideration but with 
all manner of pills, powders, ropy tonics and 
salt baths. 

"Baths!" exclaimed Keating. "I should 
shun them if they are cold. I knew a woman 
whose nervous system was ruined taking cold 
baths." He then asked me to remove my coat 
and shirt so that he could examine my stomach. 
He did not use the stethoscope, but just gazed 
at my waist line with that eagle eye of his. 



CURED 35 



Then he turned around in his swivel-chair to a 
drawer, from which he drew a silver hammer, 
large enough to drive tacks. With this instru- 
ment he tapped on my stomach and around my 
heart. Finally he said : "There is a good deal 
of fermentation/' He paused, tapped again 
and added, "and lots of distension." He ques- 
tioned me about my diet as he lay down his sil- 
ver hammer. "You feel pretty well right after 
eating, but several hours after a meal there is 
marked fermentation, is there not?" 

I assented. 

"No matter what you eat?" 

"No matter what I eat." 

"Well," he replied, taking up his hammer 
and striking his desk with the air of Uncle Joe 
calling the house to order, "that is not dyspep- 
sia. You have been the victim of a terrible mis- 
take." 

"What is it, then?" I asked eagerly. 

"That is duodenitis." 

I had never heard of that disease before. I 
felt worried. The name sounded pretty bad. 

"Du-o what?" I stammered. 

"Du-o-de-ni-tis," he replied, accenting each 
syllable. 

"Is it curable?" I cried in alarm. 



36 CURED 

"Quite curable, given time and proper treat- 
ment," he replied reassuringly. 

"Have you ever seen a case just like mine 
before ?" I inquired. 

"I have cured a hundred like you," Keating 
said, with a bold wave of the hand, which was 
convincing. I felt joyous. Here was a man 
who could cure me ! He was indeed the scien- 
tific man I had sought. 

In discussing diet Keating said: "You need 
more nitrogenous food." 

I told him I had been living on milk and 
crackers. "No strength in that," he snapped. 
Then I said I had eaten nothing but meat for 
ten days and I thought that was a nitrogenous 
diet. "What you need is a combination of 
foods," he explained. "In other words, a good 
square meal." I told him that good square 
meals meant doctor visits in my run-down con- 
dition. "Not with the medicine I am going to 
give you," he replied. 

He dashed off a prescription, saying: "This 
is for some cachexia tablets. They will allay the 
irritation in the duodenum, the sac below the 
stomach into which the foods pass. It is there 
all the misery arises in your case. That's why 
you have distress several hours after meals, no 



, V ^ £ ^ 




In about ten minutes I thought fireworks with revolving 
wheels had been set off in the epigastrium." 



CURED 37 



matter what you eat. But we are going to fix 
that. In a few months, young man, you will be 
entirely cured." 

I shouted for joy. I could have hugged that 
man. With his prescription in hand, and 
hardly waiting to thank the great scientist, who 
had at last diagnosed my case correctly, I 
dashed out into the street. My ears rang with 
the words, "entirely cured." 

When I had the tablets in my coat pocket, I 
rushed around to the post-office to write cards 
to all of my ex-physicians, telling them of my 
discovery that I had been the victim of their 
"terrible mistakes." 

I returned to the dairy farm and lost no time 
in eating a square meal of mutton chops, baked 
potatoes, bread and butter, topped off with a 
cup of tea. I took the cachexia tablet after this 
meal, the first "regular" meal I had eaten in 
months. In about ten minutes I thought fire- 
works with revolving wheels had been set off 
in the epigastrium. I felt a strangling sensa- 
tion and I gasped for air and swallowed many 
cubic yards of the atmosphere in my distress. 
There was fearful distension of the stomach. 
I wondered why it did not burst. Evidently 
Keating' s cachexia tablets had fallen asleep at 



28 CURED 

the duodenal switch ! I suffered all the horrors 
of acute indigestion for two hours and I wished 
I could have had Keating at my side to tell him 
to his beard what I thought of his theories 
about "square meals." Exhausted by pain and 
worry I finally fell asleep. The next day as I 
entered Keating's office he exclaimed: "Ah, 
you look a great deal better." 

"I feel worse," I murmured as I fell into a 
seat. Then I described the volcanic eruption 
caused by a square meal. Keating tried to 
hurry me through the recital of my symptoms 
and pains, but I insisted that he hear all the de- 
tails of this gastric quake he had set up by his 
directions. I finally appealed to him to know 
what to eat. Keating seemed peevish. "How 
should I know?" he said with caution. "You 
might try a baked apple." 

Again he pulled out his silver hammer, 
tapped on my stomach, and added: "Perhaps 
you have some liver trouble." He grabbed his 
fountain pen and wrote out a prescription to 
whip up the liver. The medicine proved to be 
some kind of crystals to be dissolved in water 
and taken between meals. I might add that I 
no longer frolicked with chops and potatoes, but 
had returned to milk and crackers. Whenever 



CURED 39 

I called on Keating he always greeted me: 
"Well, you are looking a great deal better." I 
was becoming weaker, so was my faith in 
Keating. 

In my distress I called on one of the editors 
of the leading morning paper to ask about doc- 
tors. I gave up consulting lawyers. Editors 
know everything about the people of their own 
cities. The m. e. was out, but the city editor 
was busy making out his assignment book. 
When I told him I was a newspaperman, ill 
with a mysterious and chronic brand of nervous 
dyspepsia, he gave me all his attention. I told 
him I was in search of a good doctor. Had 
they such an article in his city? I mentioned 
my experience with Keating, and how he had 
formed snap judgment of my case to the taps of 
a silver hammer. 

"That's pretty good — a silver hammer !" 
howled the editor with delight. "Perhaps you 
have not been told that a few years ago Dr. 
Keating was a blacksmith ?" 

Then he shrieked with laughter, exclaiming, 
"He uses a silver hammer now ; that's pretty 
good. Ha! Ha!" 

I recalled Keating's enormous hands and I 
pictured to myself the muscles developing as he 



40 CURED 

pounded at the forge. The journalist explained 
that a western heiress had fallen in love with 
Keating, admiring his great strength, had mar- 
ried him, educated him and removed him from 
the anvil chorus. 

Then I asked the editor if he thought any 
doctor was any good. He answered: "Well, 
the human body is very complex and all doctors 
have a great deal to learn. We must not expect 
too much of them. Most doctors admit that 
they merely practice." 



CHAPTER III 

Autointoxication Antidotes — Electric Mas- 
sage — Russian Baths — Kaiser Wilhelm and 
King Edward Electric Light Baths — Circula- 
tory Baths — Alternating Cold-Hot Baths — Hy- 
drochloric A cid — Fruit — Starvation — Fletch- 
erizing — Vulcanized Rubber Hands— Charcoal, 
and Neptune's Girdle, 

TO quote De Quincey, I was in an "al- 
mighty fix." I should certainly die if I 
did not soon take a turn for the better. 
As I walked down the street, dejected over my 
probable fate, I passed a store in which were 
displayed various cartons of cereals labeled in 
huge letters : "predigested." That was what 
I wanted, food that required no aid from the 
stomach. Then a sign caught my eye : "Mock 
Chicken." My curiosity was aroused. As I 
lingered near the store window, a policeman 
came out of the building. He was munching 
plums. Under his arm he carried a package of 
"predigested" cereals. I could not resist the 
desire to speak to him about the health foods. 

(41) 



42 CURED 

He was warm in his praise of them, declaring 
that they, with the aid of fresh subacid fruits, 
had cured him of Bright's disease when 
Swamp Root, a much-advertised medicine, had 
failed. He attributed his cure to Dr. Brickner, 
"of the Battle Creek idea." "He put me on a 
diet that did the business/' he said enthusiastic- 
ally. I was decidedly encouraged to hear that 
a doctor had actually cured somebody. 

"You must see Dr. Brickner, and see him 
right away," said the policeman, as he scrib- 
bled the doctor's address on a card. "You seem 
to be very sick." 

I hunted up Brickner and found a young man 
with a Van Dyke beard and powerful, well- 
shaped hands. He took my history, examined 
me all over, and said cheerfully: "You have 
ninety-nine chances out of a hundred of getting 
entirely well. You have no organic trouble." 

His words were like clarion notes of cheer 
and encouragement. Brickner immediately 
won my confidence when he declared he did not 
believe in medicines, and added that tonics are 
mortgages that have to be paid back. "They 
whip up the liver and stomach, leaving the pa- 
tient weak from reaction," he added. 



CURED 43 

"What is the matter with me ?" I asked, curi- 
ously. 

"Your system is filled with poisons from im- 
proper food, tea, coffee, tobacco and all alco- 
holic medicines. These things are responsible 
for your nervousness and general distress. 
Your stomach has been doing poor work and 
we must start to tone it up by strengthening the 
entire body. You suffer from autointoxica- 
tion!" 

"But I never ride in autos," I protested, 
amazed. Dr. Brickner laughed at my igno- 
rance of medical terms. "I mean you have in- 
toxicated yourself with poisons taken in your 
food and drink/' he said. Then he made me 
promise to shun tobacco, alcohol, even light 
California wines, tea, coffee, spices, pickles, 
condiments of all kinds and meat as well as fish. 
"Meat," he declared, "is filled with uric acid 
and is unfit for the human stomach." Tigers 
and hyenas, he admitted, can eat it with im- 
punity. 

He described the various cures he could give 
me for autointoxication. Summed up, they 
seemed to be embraced under one of these three 
headings : Boiling, Baking or Beating. 

First, he began boiling. He stretched me 



44 CURED 



out on a bed and then wrapped me up in blan- 
kets he had wrung out of boiling water. Then 
he planked huge rubber bags, filled with steam- 
ing hot water, under me, over me, at my sides, 
and between my feet. I was soon sweating like 
a stevedore. But Brickner had no pity. He 
made me sip hot water by the pint, saying: 
"This is the sweat bath. It will drive those 
poisons out through the pores and make your 
skin more active." I began to feel active. I 
fussed, I fumed and I wriggled until Brickner 
exclaimed in warning: "Stop, or you will kick 
off some of those bags." That was just what 
I was trying to do,, especially the round one 
which was burning a hole in one of my toes. 

The next day Brickner tried baking. He 
shoved my outstretched body into a catacomb 
studded with electric bulbs which gave out a 
heat like a Cuban sun. Brickner said these elec- 
tric light baths had been devised by a doctor at 
Battle Creek for King Edward and Kaiser Wil- 
helm to counteract any gout they might get 
from eating court dinners. (Brickner was al- 
ways harping on the sin of hearty eating.) The 
light baths proved less irksome than the steam- 
ing blankets and bags, and I experienced a re- 
poseful lassitude which lasted while my body 



CURED 45 

was in the spot light. Brickner then used Rus- 
sian baths to drive the poisons out of my pores. 
I was placed in a tight-fitting box. An alcohol 
lamp, with a cup of water on it, was put under 
my chair, in which were little holes to admit the 
steam to my body. When the lamp began to 
get into action I thought I should faint from 
heat and exhaustion. 

As I did not show marked improvement, but, 
on the contrary, continued weakness as a result 
of these severe elimi native treatments, Brick- 
ner made me sample the circulatory baths. I 
plunged one foot into a bath tub filled with elec- 
trically charged water, while the other foot was 
held up in a crane-like attitude. The water was 
icy and made my foot very red. Then I put in 
the other foot. The bath was exciting, to say 
the least. It required good equilibrium powers. 
The doctor said this kind of a bath improved 
the circulation of the blood and that my health 
would improve, for good blood makes good 
nerves. My digestion seemed to lag, however, 
so Dr. Brickner gave me some alternating hot 
and cold baths, which were more stimulating 
than electricity water. The extremities were 
plunged into very hot and then into very cold 
water and then back to the hot. I was re- 



46 CURED 

minded of the treatments described by Dante 
and illustrated by Dore in a certain work enti- 
tled, "Hell." My fingers and toes became so 
chapped by the violent and sudden climatic 
changes and the general humidity, that Brick- 
ner had to call a halt in his campaign of bath- 
ing. So he began beating. 

"Which would you prefer, electric massage 
or Swedish massage by hand?" he asked me. 
I was familiar with electric massage in barber 
shops, and as it was pleasant, I quickly made 
my choice. Brickner brought out his electric 
vibrator, which looked like a bomb with a han- 
dle on it. When he touched off this bomb, I 
heard noises like a June bumblebee chorus. 
To the sounds of "buzz-burr-bizz" were added 
the rattle of the vulcanized rubber hand, which 
went up and down, muttering, "jigger, jigger, 
jigger!" When this hand reached my skin I 
said "jigger" too, and lots of other things. I 
thought I had been introduced to a spanking 
machine. My muscles rose in ocean-like 
waves, a touch on the spare ribs felt like a blow 
from a baseball bat, and when the doctor mas- 
saged my chest with his marvelous machine, 
there were resonant sounds like a bass drum 
put into action by a husky Salvation Army lieu- 



CURED 47 



tenant. The buzzing and shocking cure made 
me more nervous, and I prayed for the hand 
massage, with or without Swedish movements. 

Brickner sprinkled me all over with talcum 
powder and went to work. Soon I realized that 
his fingers could "beat the machine." He be- 
gan, however, as gently as a pianist tickling the 
ivories in one of Chopin's aerated waltzes. Then 
he warmed up to his theme and struck out in 
pugilistic form. He pounded me as though 
mashing potatoes ; he slapped me and he struck 
me, he punched me and he rubbed me. And 
still he didn't let up. He played, "Paddy Cake, 
Paddy Cake, Baker's man" on my stomach, 
chest and liver and up and down the spinal col- 
umn; then he pinched and he squeezed, he 
twisted and he turned, he pushed and he pulled 
my arms, hands, legs, feet, neck and torso until 
I felt he had mistaken me for a contortionist. 

I was quite exhausted from the ordeal. After 
ten more minutes of these "Swedish" move- 
ments, Brickner himself began to pant like a 
hunted rabbit. 

"Gradually we'll get these poisons eliminated 
from your system, young man," he gasped, "but 
you will have to stay with the treatment a long 
time." 



48 CURED 



The beating, boiling and baking symposium 
of cures produced only temporary relief. While 
Brickner was pounding me into jelly or steam- 
ing me into mush, my nerves took a vacation. 
But the instant I put on my clothes and began 
to walk around, they resumed business. 

"We shall try other measures," said Brick- 
ner, not the least discouraged. First of all he 
gave me what he called a "test-meal." I was 
told to eat two ounces of bread, then drink eight 
ounces of water ; wait an hour and then let him 
surprise my stomach at work. The surprise 
party was engineered by the stomach tube — 
that hateful red snake I had grappled with in 
Alabama — and the meal removed, was sent to 
a chemist to be analyzed. "In this way we get 
exact knowledge as to just how much acid there 
is in the stomach — whether one has hyperpep- 
sia, or too much hydrochloric acid ; or hypopep- 
sia, which is deficiency of hydrochloric acid." 
Thus spoke Brickner. So we arranged for the 
test-meal. In trying to make me swallow the 
tube, Brickner was as awkward as an alligator, 
and said something about wishing his wife 
were present to help. I suffered the old-time 
tortures. When we got the tube down no meal 
would come up. Then Brickner said : "We will 



CURED 49 



pour down a quart of water so as to assist mat- 
ters." In this way the meal was raised, and he 
took a pint of the fluid to send to Dr. Zabinski 
in California for analysis. 

When the report came, Dr. Zabinski had di- 
agnosed my case as apepsia. Brickner has- 
tened to explain that meant a total absence of 
hydrochloric acid, due to the atonic condition 
of my stomach walls. I was greatly alarmed, 
but Brickner said that for a few weeks I could 
take hydrochloric acid purchased at a drug 
store, and in the meantime the stomach could 
be trained to manufacture its own. 

I was allowed to eat twice-toasted or dry 
bread and whipped whites of egg. No improve- 
ment being noticed, even with the addition of 
hydrochloric acid swallowed through a glass 
tube, Brickner said I should try the fruit cure. 
This consisted in eating nothing but raw fruit 
of many varieties. Brickner declared that ex- 
periments had proved that fruit, when taken 
by itself, is harmless; that combined with cer- 
tain foods it starts up all kinds of stomach mis- 
ery. Hence it has been called "lead at night." 
But the fruit cure brought no relief. I con- 
tinued to have dyspepsia and nervous twitch- 
ings. 



50 CURED 



Then Brickner decided to resort to heroic 
measures. The new cure was one to appeal to 
thrifty people, for it consisted of air and water 
as a diet — otherwise called starvation. I came 
to the city to be near a hydrant. "The efficacy 
of this cure," explained Brickner, "consists in 
eliminating all broken-down tissues, thus puri- 
fying the entire digestive tract." He said I 
should take a drink of water every time I felt 
hungry. I must say the cure had some advan- 
tages. One did not have to spend huge sums in 
restaurants tipping waiters. There was no ne- 
cessity of straining the eyes and tongue with 
French names of complicated dishes on the 
menu. But in giving up dining one gives up a 
very fixed habit, and I found it a hard one to 
break . It was Lent raised to the nth power. 

I managed with great difficulty to refrain 
from food for two days. On the third day I 
heard such grumbling and clamoring in the 
gastric region that I begged for food. "Why 
must you eat?" asked Brickner. "One of my 
patients, Mr. Johnson, has stood the fast six 
days." 

"My stomach is just howling for food," I re- 
plied. "Nonsense, man," said Brickner, "your 
stomach never asks for food; it is the tissues." 



CURED 51 

"I thought all of the tissues were broken 
down and eliminated by this time," I replied, as 
Brickner winced. 

Brickner finally allowed me some kind of 
hardtack or dog biscuit, as dry as a bone and 
tasting like shavings. It shot down my throat 
like a boat over Niagara Falls. 

I have since read that after the third day of 
the hunger hike, the craving for food ceases, 
especially if one will buckle a wide belt tightly 
over the gastric region to "muzzle" the bark 
and quiet the muscular agitation. 

The curing of my autointoxication seemed to 
be a slow process. Brickner declared again and 
again that I should have to reform my entire 
style of eating. He made me read Horace 
Fletcher's books on diet and buccal digestion. 
Brickner also provided me with a cogy of a song 
sung, he said, at a noted sanitarium where dys- 
peptics are cured. The opening chorus ran : 
"Chew, chew, chew, 
For that's the thing to do!" 

It was not a particularly pleasing tune, and 
I much preferred the song of one of my friends 
after a mince-meat pie frolic: "Friendly may 
we part and quickly meet again !" 

To necessitate a thorough mastication of 



52 CURED 



every morsel of food, Brickner made me abstain 
from all liquids at meal time. He said that a 
very dry diet, composed of cereals which had 
stood 520 degrees Fahrenheit, insured activity 
of the salivary glands. I soon discovered that 
he was correct — one had to chew or choke. 

I was not allowed any meat, but was given 
hard-boiled yolks of eggs and almond meal. I 
made the meal myself by grinding up almonds 
in some kind of a sausage machine. 

I Fletcherized to a finish, and in a couple of 
weeks I could eat the driest biscuit without 
much difficulty. It took time, however, to get 
the food down. My nervousness continued, 
and one day Brickner explained that he had 
discovered my stomach was "prolapsed" two 
inches. It was the lower border that had taken 
a fall. Perhaps I had swallowed too much 
saliva. 

Brickner said he made the discovery of the 
prolapse by listening to water splashing in my 
stomach by aid of the stethoscope. The stom- 
ach would have to get back into its right size be- 
fore a permanent cure could be expected. For 
this trouble along the border I was made to 
wear two vulcanized rubber hands, shaped like 
oyster shells, and attached to a leather-covered 



CURED 53 

steel belt worn around the waist. The mechan- 
ical uplift process was decidedly uncomfortable, 
especially when I sat down, for then the hands 
seemed to creep upward, scraping the flesh. I 
bore the ordeal for several months, until one 
day, in climbing stairs one of the hands broke. 
The great relief encouraged me to desist from 
further attempts to raise the border. More- 
over, Brickner assured me that the stomach had 
come up one inch. 

Though I never experienced nausea, there 
were marked symptoms of fermentation, and 
Brickner tried wheat charcoal in an effort to 
control it. Besides putting a black border on 
my tongue, it did not seem to have any other 
effect. Brickner encouraged me to continue 
cure-chasing, saying that he knew of some 200 
kinds of baths to build up the general health. I 
was skeptical about their efficacy. Surely I had 
a misery and a mysterious one at that. I sought 
information at first hand. I begged Brickner 
to lend me a large medical book he had on 
"The Stomach," which I read with the hope of 
finding some hint at a cure. I discovered that I 
had tried everything mentioned except surgery 
and — Neptune's Girdle. The girdle was a fa- 
vorite with Priessnitz, the great water doctor 



54 CURED 

of Austria, where it was called "Umschlag." 
I decided to try it. 

The girdle, named after Neptune, was elabo- 
rate. It consisted of about nine feet of linen, a 
foot and a half wide, and about six feet of flan- 
nel, a little wider. The flannel was wound over 
the linen after the linen had been soaked in cold 
water and wound over the epigastrium. Just 
what Neptune had to do with this girdle I do 
not know, though I read up carefully on the 
planet in the encyclopedia. 

I bought the linen and the flannel, having 
great trouble in answering embarrassing ques- 
tions asked by the saleslady. I went home and 
adjusted the girdle. I looked at myself in a 
long mirror and discovered that I was immense. 
My clothes did not fit with all that stuff around 
me, so I went to a tailor, named Schneider, tak- 
ing him three pairs of trousers to be let out at 
the belt. "Vat you going to do, become a beer 
trinker?" he asked. I told him I was taking 
"Umschlag" treatment. I did not go back to 
Dr. Brickner for some time, preferring to save 
money. While the girdle was thus economical 
in its treatment, it had disadvantages. People 
stared at me rather hard, and seemed mystified 





-_ HI 


o 


^>^ 


G@ 


0© 


Q 


%)*? 


!n>1 


3 


L-I->^? 




CURED 55 



to see a man with a thin face and such a body. 
But the book said that the girdle would cure any 
kind of stomach trouble (excepting cancer), so 
I persevered with the treatment. I remained 
faithfully bandaged for many months, but, alas, 
the girdle did not cure my stomach trouble. 

The way I finally discarded the girdle was 
rather peculiar. I crossed over to Canada for 
a little trip. At the custom house, as every- 
where else, I was very nervous. The custom 
house officials, with those X-ray eyes of theirs, 
saw that I was worried about something. They 
had been coached as to how European smug- 
glers carry contraband by the bandage process, 
so they pounced upon me. I protested that I 
was nervous from dyspepsia and not from a 
consciousness of guilt, but they insisted on 
stripping me of my clothing, especially that 
"bundle of stuff" around my waist. They un- 
wound the flannel and linen. What amazement 
in the officials' faces and what grimaces they 
made! It was most mortifying. I was found 
to have about two dollars' worth of linen and 
flannel, and nothing more. The experience 
cured me of all aspirations to wear any more 
celestial garments like the girdle of Neptune. 



56 CURED 



Certain it is that during those trying moments 
when I was being unwound I wished the girdle 
as remote as the planet. 



CHAPTER IV 

Cold Air Blood Thickener — Roosevelt Ranch 
Life — Life in the Saddle — Eskimo Baths — Ice 
Bags, 

MAKING no improvement, I decided to 
have a long talk with Dr. Brickner. He 
declared he could suggest plenty more 
cures. I was frank with him about my desire 
to make a radical change in treatment. I had 
tried food and no food ; hot baths, tepid baths, 
cold baths, foot, hand, abdominal, electric light 
and plain electric baths. From head to foot I 
had been bathed. I had also had stomach 
baths, and had plastered and papered its walls 
with medicines — yellow, white, red and black — 
the colors of the Burmah flag design. I had 
rested the stomach by introducing nothing but 
water for several days ; I had given it whipped 
whites of eggs when eggs were as dear as Bar- 
rios diamonds; I had held it up like a babe in 
arms with vulcanized rubber hands, greatly to 
my discomfort; I had put it in swaddling 

clothes. Yet it remained a kicker, a malcon- 

(57) 



58 CURED 



tent, racking my nerves and preventing me 
from attending to business. I needed some new 
powerful treatment to put the stomach in tone; 
if that failed, I might as well get the thing out ; 
be divorced from it for good. 

I decided to abandon Brickner in spite of his 
endless resources and determined to doctor my- 
self. So I told him good-bye, and no doubt he 
was glad to get rid of me. 

He said, when parting, "Stick to a careful 
diet, young man, and remember that you have 
been putting too many things into that stomach 
of yours." 

I walked down the street feeling like a man 
out of a job. That night I read in a magazine 
an article about the "Value of Cold Air." It 
was a most interesting article. It stated that 
most invalids are afraid of cold air, but, pro- 
vided one is warmly clad one can stand what 
are termed "cold air lung baths" and derive 
great benefit from them. Cold air is a tonic, 
warm air is a depressant. Cold air, entering 
the lungs, is spread out over two thousand 
square feet of membrane in the ramifying pas- 
sages of the air-cells. Under this membrane 
all of the blood passes every two or three min- 



CURED 59 



utes to be cleansed by this pure, dense, germless 
air. 

When I read that cold air is a tonic for the 
stomach I was deeply impressed. I realized 
that I had not taken deep breaths of pure, cold 
air in my various treatments. I had lived in the 
dust and smoke of a city. The air I needed was 
the air that swept over snow-covered fields. It 
did not take me long to make up my mind. I 
went to the ticket office of a well-known rail- 
road and asked the agent which state was the 
coldest in the Union. 

He replied: "I think, Montana." 
I told him that I wished to spend a few 
months in a very cold place free from dust, 
germs, miasma, noxious vapors, malarial para- 
sites, mosquitoes or flies to carry around sick- 
ness and death. I just wanted plain, good, 
country, blood-purifying and tissue-renovating 
oxygen. He stared at me, but finally called the 
head agent and held a consultation. The head 
agent talked to me in a soothing tone, mean- 
while watching me carefully. I went over the 
same story with him and told him that I had 
taken numerous cures and that I now wanted 
something new, daring, adventurous, with a 
Peary dash to it. 



60 CURED 



The agent grinned and said: "Well, Mon- 
tana is not so far from here, and we could sell 
you a ticket straight to Helena. I do not think 
Montana would disappoint you, for I have lived 
up there in a fur coat and I tell you, young man, 
it is damn cold and that's why I managed to get 
transferred farther south. If Montana doesn't 
suit you, go to our ticket office at Helena and 
buy a ticket for Seattle and then take a boat for 
Alaska, where the mean temperature is fifty- 
four degres below zero. If that is not cold 
enough for you, get in touch with a Peary relief 
expedition." 

I thanked the agent. As I left, I saw the 
whole force gazing at me. Of course, they 
thought I had escaped from a "nut farm." I 
went to Helena, carrying five hundred pounds 
of baggage, consisting of blankets, coal oil, gas- 
oline stoves, to ward off the excessive cold while 
taking the air lung baths. 

I reached Helena in fairly good shape and 
found that the ticket agent had not "flim- 
flammed" me. They had the real cold article 
up there. I went to a hotel to get warmed up. 
I read more about the cold air cure in hygienic 
magazines, which stated that explorers passed 
two years in cold climates to thicken their blood 



CURED 61 

before visiting the tropics, which are so ener- 
vating. My blood evidently needed thickening 
after the liquefying treatments given in those 
steam baths of Brickner's. 

I found a ranch a few miles from Helena 
owned by an old farmer, who lived there with 
his wife and family. The farmer was a stock 
raiser and was willing to aid me restore my 
health for a consideration. 

I spent most of my time in my room ; the tem- 
perature was below zero and so was my vitality. 
When the weather became even colder, I had to 
stay up part of the night putting wood into the 
stove. I left the window open an inch or two to 
let in that blood-thickening air so highly bene- 
ficial to lungs and stomach. I managed to sleep 
from 8 p. m. to 8 a. m., which proved the 
statement of one writer, that cold air in the 
lungs produces very sound sleep. I spent so 
much time in my room that I gradually lost 
what strength I had. My sedentary life, 
hugging the fire, was to blame for my contin- 
ued weakness. I still had nervous symptoms 
of a marked type. I was very careful not to 
partake of the full fare of rich foods at the 
rancher's, though I was paying full board. I 
remembered Dr. Brickner's warning and I ate 



62 CURED 



dry, toasted bread and one tgg a day, boiled 
twenty minutes. I was fearful to load up my 
system again with poisons by eating much ni- 
trogenous food. I drank large quantities of 
water, employing my time by the stove in my 
room. The rancher and his family were 
amazed that I could live on bread, water and an 
occasional tgg t but the suffering I had endured 
in the past cured me of any desire to experiment 
again with "square meals. " 

One day I was munching a twice-baked crust 
of bread which was as dry as a bone and almost 
as hard, when I felt a cracking in my mouth and 
heard a peculiar sound. I had broken a tooth. 
The crust had been too dry and too hard. There 
was but one thing to do — to go to Helena and 
see a dentist. 

While in the dental chair I had great trouble 
in sitting still, even before the drilling machine 
began to buzz. And then — but why describe 
it? It occurred to me that as I was seeing a 
dentist I might as well see a doctor, so I went 
to the first whose sign attracted my attention. 
His name was Kitchener, and he looked as 
though the cold air lung baths in Helena had 
agreed with him. He spoke in a deep bass 
voice : "Well, what is wrong with you?" 



CURED 63 

Oh, but didn't I tell him! He looked at me 
coldly as I recited a synopsis of my cures. 
When I described the cold air cure his face re- 
laxed ; as I mentioned about explorers "getting 
their blood thickened ,, his eyes twinkled with 
amusement. "Do you do everything advised 
by these ten-cent hygiene magazines ?" he asked 

"I am willing to do anything/' I answered. 

"Well/' he said, "if the air on that ranch does 
not put you in condition to digest hard boards 
and tacks, barbed wire fence or anything else, 
it disappoints me. However, you might do a 
little work. I have heard at commencement ad- 
dresses when I was young, 'Study the Life of 
Cornaro/ If I gave commencement addresses 
I should say to the young men, 'Study the life 
of Roosevelt/ He was delicate and puny; he 
came west, right out in this region. He 
roughed it and worked, by golly, he did. Look 
at the man he became ! If it's advice you want, 
I say: 'Study the life of Roosevelt in the 
west/ " 

I supposed that this eulogy of Roosevelt 
would cost me the usual consultation fee of two 
dollars, but Kitchener waved the money aside 
in the breezy western manner and said, "Keep 
it. When you go home, get out of that room of 



64 CURED 



yours and mix with some of the cow-punchers ; 
you'll be all right." 

I went home with a new program. I met 
some of the cow-punchers who took their meals 
at our house. I had a long talk with the fore- 
man and asked him where he obtained all his 
"duds" which helped him ride so well and 
punch cattle. He said most of the boys bought 
their stuff from Montgomery & Ward, or 
Sears, Roebuck & Co., in Chicago. I sent for 
a catalogue and soon made out a formidable 
list of accoutrements with which to follow the 
Roosevelt Ranch Life. When the goods came 
I felt pride in my heart, for I knew the cowboys 
would have nothing "on me" in the way of 
leather chaps, boots, spurs, rough shirts, ban- 
dana handkerchiefs, or big, eye-shading slouch 
hats. The leather chaps were the funniest 
things. They looked like leather overalls and 
buckled with big clips on either side. They 
were exceedingly heavy. It was hard to walk 
in them, yet I felt so cocky over my new outfit 
that I forgot that my muscles were flabby and 
weak. 

How the cowboys yelled when they saw me ! 
They waltzed around me and roared hilariously 



CURED 65 

as I tried to strut past them in my new togs. I 
did not walk with great grace. 

"Suffering snakes," yelled one of the punch- 
ers, "look at this young 'un, if he don't look like 
a cow-puncher ! He's got even the bells on his 
spurs, wh-oo !" 

Another shouted, "Hey there, Bill, these here 
chaps ain't made fer to walk in but to ride in. 
No wonder, kid, you find 'em powerful heavy !" 

Having made my debut to Montana cow- 
punching society in regulation regalia, I 
broached the subject of Dr. Kitchener's dis- 
course to the foreman; I told him I wanted a 
job on the ranch, cow-punching, or something 
like that. 

"You?" he gasped, "you punch cows! Gee, 
whittaker, kid, you couldn't come within a mile 
of a cow, even with them 'duds' on." He roared 
with laughter. This, of course, somewhat hurt 
my feelings, but I was not discouraged. Taking 
the foreman aside I gave him several "chaws" 
of tobacco and I led him to my room. I pro- 
duced the rubber stomach tube, which I had 
tucked away in a towel. I asked him if he 
would do me the favor to swallow it eighteen 
inches. 



66 CURED 

"What, that thing ?" he said in surprise, "I 
guess not, I'd choke." 

I told him I could. He was incredulous, but 
I proceeded to do it, suppressing much of the 
quivering that I had shown on previous occa- 
sions. The foreman made no effort to conceal 
his amazement and swore I had nerve enough 
to do anything on the ranch. But, he assured 
me, it would take time to "become a Roosevelt/' 
He asked if I had ever milked cows. I told him 
I had read in a paper that Roosevelt had never 
done that. He insisted that was the way he 
would begin with me. I had milked cows 
when I was a youngster and admitted I knew 
something about it. He asked me to show up 
at the barn at five o'clock each evening, wearing 
my new "duds" if I wished, but leaving off 
those bell spurs. 

"You might get too much exercise, kid, 
wearin' them 'ere spurs. Later on we'll take 
yer on a round-up and see how yer act aroun' a 
cow," he condescended to inform me. 

I was happy. I was going to work! There 
were several men at the barn to do the milking 
in a covered corral not far away. The snow on 
the way to the corral was pretty deep, and it 
was a great effort to get through with all those 



CURED 67 

heavy clothes on. The exercise was good, and 
the excitement of the new cure made me forget 
my stomach miseries for a time. 

I was making quite a success of this milking 
business. Night after night I performed my 
task, no matter how cold my hands were. It 
was certainly not an agreeable occupation — 
milking cows, with a blizzard raging outside. 
But I had to stick to it, for otherwise the fore- 
man would not graduate me into cow-punching. 

One evening something happened. It was 
while I was milking a wretched-looking cow 
that seemed even more nervous than the aver- 
age Montana cows, which incessantly wave 
their tails, provided they have not been frozen 
off. Suddenly the cow kicked backwards and I 
was hurled, boots, chaps, big hat and all, 
against the corral posts, the bucket of milk all 
over me. 

I had been given a new kind of bath — the 
milk bath, praised by Miss Anna Held as a com- 
plexion beautifier. But the massage that had 
come with it was most distressing to certain 
parts of my anatomy. 

The shock of being kicked was hard on a per- 
son as nervous as I. No bones were broken, 
but I felt upset and nursed my bruises by stay- 



68 CURED 



ing in bed. The foreman and some of the other 
men called on me in my room ; it was tantalizing 
to see the efforts they made to keep from 
laughing at my mishap. 

Said the foreman, in a cheery tone: "Bill, 
you wasn't bad at milking, but some of these 
critters is all powerful with their feet, and they 
gits even some of us wat is used to 'em." 
Finally he said that when I was able to get 
round again he would fix me up for a new cure 
himself, one that would "skin" all other cures I 
had taken "a mile." 

I discovered that the new treatment was 
"life in the saddle." The cure began on a little 
roan horse. I had had some experience with 
horses when I was a boy. Still, the effort to 
mount with all my "duds" on was some effort 
for a person who had suffered from lack of ex- 
ercise. I rode the pony around the barn at a 
walk. Whenever the horse trotted I had a 
hard time. I did not feel strong enough to hold 
tight with my knees, as I was ordered to do. 
However, I held on to the pommel of the saddle, 
clutching it with a tight grip. I rode perhaps 
too much the first day, for I did not feel able to 
walk for several days afterward. I took up the 
cure again, however, not wishing to disappoint 



CURED 69 

the foreman, who declared that this treatment 
would make me a Roosevelt. 

There was one serious objection to the roan; 
he shied. He had, moreover, a bad habit of 
rushing up against a wire fence and damaging 
my chaps, and sometimes my skin. When I 
told the foreman about it, he said that some 
Indian boys had taught that trick to the animal 
and that he would have to give me another 
horse to ride. My second mount was a big sor- 
rel, as gentle as a kitten. He never shied at 
anything, but at times he stumbled; and the 
pommel gave blows to my stomach that I did 
not forget for days. This horse was a monster 
in size, and I needed a step-ladder to get on. 
Twice I felt the twinges of appendicitis when 
mounting. 

I thought it better to buy a horse and give it 
what education was needed. As luck would 
have it, a horse-dealer passed by our ranch with 
a string of unbroken ponies. 

One of the cowboys said to me, "Get yer an 
unbroken cayoose and I'll bust her fer yer for 
five dollars ; then you'll have a nag what'll 
suit." 

The horse-dealer was a smooth talker and 
very courteous. He pointed out several ponies 



70 CURED 



to me, saying they were all "three-year-olds. 
Just the age to 'bust/ " I consulted with my 
cowboy friend and finally picked out a gray 
mare which ran like a deer. We called her 
Nancy. She had a gentle head, and her feet 
were as cute as could be. She was a bargain 
for fifty dollars, though some of the cowboys 
said I paid too much for her. The next day the 
busting process began. I did not see it, but I 
heard about it. She tore the glove off the cow- 
boy when he tried to put a halter on her, so I 
furnished him with a new pair of two-dollar 
gloves after he had ridden the mare for a week. 
I was greatly shocked to see the way her mouth 
was cut, but after a week or two the buster 
thought she was gentle enough for me to ride. 
When I saw him saddle her up and noticed the 
contortions she went through, I was of a differ- 
ent opinion. Nearly everyone who saw Nancy 
complimented me, however, on getting an ani- 
mal with such a gentle head and fine little feet. 
Gentle as my animal was, she tried to lie down 
when they put the saddle on her. Finally, I 
mustered enough courage to ride her. A cow- 
boy accompanied me, and we rode several hun- 
dred yards. The animal seemed dazed and 
leaned against the well-broken horse ridden by 



CURED 71 

the cow-puncher. Nancy would not respond 
to the reins, and the puncher had to pull her 
head the way we wished to turn. I was fast 
becoming sick of my bargain. 

Nancy remained idle for several days and 
seemed very fidgety. One of the punchers said 
she was getting over her dazed feeling, so I 
went to the stable. As I entered I saw one of 
the boys who fed the horses sitting on the 
ground yelling with pain. A tin bucket, in 
which he had carried the feed, lay flattened like 
a pancake. I asked him if I could do anything, 
but he was unable to speak. One of the men 
gave the unfortunate chap some whisky, and he 
finally said, "That damned gray mare kicked 
me." 

What a revelation! I thanked my stars I 
had not attempted to go near her in the stable. 
Her head might be gentle, but not her hoofs. I 
decided to sell Nancy. I had been kicked by a 
cow; I had no inclination to be kicked by a 
vigorous young mare. But I had difficulty in 
finding a buyer. The cowboys did not want 
her. An old rancher from Mexico looked at 
her, but shook his head and said, "Mucho 
bronco, mucho bronco/' and assured me I had 
been deceived about her age, and that she was 



72 CURED 



just a common, rough-neck, Indian pony that 
had run wild too long. Since I could not sell 
her or trade her, I tried to give her away, as 
her feed bill was getting into my pocket. No 
one seemed to want her. The only thing to do 
was to break her, despite the warning of the 
old Mexican rancher that she would never 
prove any good. 

One cowboy said he would ride her for me 
every day for a week if I would give him a fine 
little Navajo blanket I had purchased. I con- 
sented. He saddled her up, three men holding 
the animal, and then he started to ride her out 
of the corral. We witnessed a first-class 
bronco-busting exhibition; the little mare 
bucked Mr. Bronco Buster right over her head. 
Then she lay down and rolled. Then we saw 
her come out of the corral like a shot from a 
gun. We had a great time getting her back. 
She bucked and bucked, but she was finally 
lassoed. I sold her to a rancher for fifteen dol- 
lars. She cost me about a hundred. 

Still, I had not had enough of horses. I tried 
several others, letting the foreman select them 
for me. As the weather grew warmer I rode a 
good deal, invariably returning home with a 
pain in the neck. 



CURED 73 



I continued on the strict diet of twice-cooked 
bread and a twenty-minute cooked egg. I re- 
ceived a letter from Dr. Brickner encouraging 
me to stay with the diet treatment and never 
again resort to tonics. 

The exercise outdoors did me some good, and 
I became stronger ; but I continued to be very 
nervous, especially when I went to church or 
had to sit down. My face flushed without any 
apparent cause, and I had those choking sensa- 
tions at the throat that pronounced me any- 
thing but a well man. I began to lose hope that 
this life in the saddle would make me a Roose- 
velt. 

While at the ranch I had the pleasure of 
meeting the Rev. Anton Acht, the pastor of a 
neighboring church, who used to ride by our 
ranch. I was told he had the curious habit of 
keeping a roaring fire in his study and leaving 
the front door of his house wide open when the 
temperature was w r ay below zero. I called on 
the Rev. Acht to satisfy my curiosity. He said 
he believed in fresh air. 

He told me his liver was dilated and asked 
me to feel it. I did not notice anything wrong 
with it, as I did not know just how large it 
should be. I did notice that he was an 



74 CURED 

enormous eater, so I lent him my book on the 
"Stomach." After reading it he admitted that 
at night he had an acid taste in his mouth, and 
decided to go to Spokane, Wash., to have a 
test-meal taken and analyzed. He found that 
he had hyperpepsia to a marked degree, and 
when he came back he refrained from eating 
potatoes and took starch only in a dextrinized 
form. He cut down his food allowance one- 
third and chewed it thoroughly — "au Fletcher." 
In six months he made a complete recovery, was 
given a larger parish and wrote me from south- 
ern Montana that he was enjoying perfect 
health. All nervous symptoms and every trace 
of acidity had disappeared. 

How happy I felt at rinding some use for the 
book on the "Stomach" ! And at times I felt a 
little sad, too, saying to myself, "I have cured 
others — myself I cannot cure." 

The remarkable recovery of the Rev. Acht 
inspired me with new hopes. Someone wrote 
me of a new cure — "Eskimo Snow Baths." Be- 
sides the baths, the cure consisted in frolicking 
in the snow for half an hour, morning and af- 
ternoon, throwing snow balls, and thus getting 
the hands very cold and then very warm. 

I looked in vain through encyclopedias and 



CURED 75 



books of travel to find whether the Eskimos 
performed ablutions with snow balls. I ascer- 
tained they had their games out on the snowy 
trackless fields in front of their igloos, but there 
was no mention of baths. Still I was willing to 
sample everything. There was no difficulty in 
getting snow and making snow balls, nor in 
throwing them — an exercise which I found 
very chilly at first. At ten o'clock came the 
snow bath indoors. I put on a bathing suit 
and rolled around in the tub of snow. That 
was enough for the first day. My skin looked 
like goose flesh; my jaws ached from the cold; 
my teeth chattered. 

The second day I tried the snow-ball mas- 
sage. As the big arctic pills moved over my skin 
I felt as though a dose of driven snow had been 
shot into my arteries. I was speechless with 
cold. The chills went down the spinal column 
and passed the icy hand to other parts of my 
anatomy. It was some time before I became 
warmed up and, despite alcohol rub-downs and 
many blankets, I did not react very well. I 
wondered if my whole body would suffer an at- 
tack of chilblains. Then suddenly I became 
consoled by receiving a Sunday paper, which 
had on it a picture of a pugilist and some of his 



76 CURED 



friends sprawling around in bathing suits in 
the snow. I continued the snow massage. My 
hands became chapped, so I sent for a pair of 
rubber gloves, and when they came I continued 
the treatment. 

After a few weeks of the Eskimo baths, I 
felt so wretched that I suspected that neither 
cold air nor cold water improved my nerves 
or my stomach. As a last resort I tried a new 
cure — an ice bag held half an hour at the pit of 
the stomach. This treatment was described in 
a medical work I got hold of and was supposed 
to help the stomach manufacture hydrochloric 
acid, which I was supposed to lack. I tried the 
ice bag for several weeks and it made me feel 
as though I had bolted a pint of ice cream every 
time I applied it. Whether or not it increased 
the flow of hydrochloric acid I cannot state, for 
I did not have a test-meal taken. Certain it is 
that it increased my aversion to cold. 

About this time I received a warning letter 
from a physician friend of the Rev. Anton 
Acht, who said that he feared I was studying 
my case too much and was developing hypo- 
chondria. "Hypo, under, and chondria, the 
ribs," he wrote, "too much under the ribs. Try 
to forget the dyspepsia." 



CURED 77^ 

I decided not only to try to forget the dys- 
pepsia, but also to try to forget Montana and 
its arctic atmosphere. Believing that my blood 
had been sufficiently thickened, I yearned for 
a semi-tropical clime, where I could be outdoors 
all the time. I noticed that in summer, when I 
was outdoors in Montana, I felt much better 
than when I was cooped up hugging a stove and 
reading books all day and deep into the night. 

Then I hit upon a new cure, which was of 
great possibility; it was decidedly original and 
somewhat exciting. It seemed economical, 
too, and, like the starvation cure, it took one 
away from a fixed habit of civilization to a 
primitive custom — as well as costume. 



CHAPTER V 

Next to Nature — Roof Sun Baths — Hard 
Labor — Rattlesnake Fright. 

THE new cure was described in Sunday 
magazine supplements, in fifteen-cent 
magazines and in cloth-bound books. 
It seemed to be quite popular in parts of Europe 
and in New Jersey (despite the mosquitoes). 
It was simply getting back to nature, using the 
atmosphere as one's physician and druggist. 
Westinghouse had achieved fame and fortune 
by using air to stop trains; sick people could 
obtain health and happiness by employing air to 
stop "nerves" or cure almost any ill. 

The articles I read explained how. If a man 
walked around naked, indoors or outdoors, the 
air acted beneficially on the five million pores of 
the skin, the largest pores being on the head and 
on the soles of the feet. Some of the writers 
took a fling at tight or glove-fitting underwear 
worn by so many people, and attributed colds 
and pneumonia to this practice. But as I un- 
derstood the nature cure, neither underwear 

(78) 



CURED 79 

nor overwear was desirable! The ideal "sys- 
tem" was simply to refrain from dressing in 
the morning. 

Someone has said that life in modern society 
to-day is largely a matter of "dressing and un- 
dressing." I pictured to myself all kinds of 
comforts in taking a nature cure. There 
would be no quarrels with the laundryman over 
torn or absent collars and shirts, no fuss with 
tailors over bills, no crawling under bureaus to 
find lost collar buttons, no tiring adjustment of 
pearl studs to starched bosoms, no tight-fitting 
evening coats, no neck-torturing collars. One 
would walk around with the freedom of Adam 
in the Garden of Eden, while the five million 
pores had the time of their lives. 

Was there anything improper about this 
cure? Certainly not, according to its ex- 
ponents. "To wear clothes is a very dirty 
habit/' declared one of the famous physicians, 
who had lectured on "Giving the Skin a 
Chance." He said the opposition to the nature 
cure was found among silly people, tied to 
fashion's whims, who pretended that the skin, 
given to man by his Creator, was an improper 
covering for the body. 

Among the nature cure prophets I found the 



80 CURED 



names of Diefenbach, Guttzeit and Gustav 
Nagel. It seems that their chief and most pow- 
erful argument for the naked cult is that naked 
man is born into the world and that, therefore, 
nature intends that naked we should go through 
life. 

Clothing, it was stated, is to be looked upon 
as the outward sign of the deterioration, the 
ill-health, the immorality of the present race. 
Clothing is not necessary as a protection 
against cold, as Nansen discovered when he 
met the stark naked Eskimos in the Far North. 

Some of the articles I read discussed the won- 
derful power of air. It was stated that in one 
of the great hospitals of Paris throat troubles 
and catarrhal affections are treated by outdoor 
yawning exercises, permitting pure air to en- 
ter the throat and nasal passages, killing off the 
germs. 

I decided to try this nature cure, and perhaps 
it might build me up and rid me of my very 
chronic case of dyspepsia; but I should not 
emulate the Eskimos who entertained Nansen. 
I should seek a warmer clime before I threw 
away my clothes to lead the primitive life for 
the benefit of the five million pores. 

It seemed to me that the Fiji Islands would 



CURED 81 



best suit my purpose, but I dreaded a sea voy- 
age, so I picked out a nook in western Idaho. 

I left Montana in a blinding snowstorm and 
bought a ticket for Spokane. There I called 
at the sanitarium where they fixed up my good 
friend Acht. I asked the doctors to make a 
stomach analysis for me, telling them what a 
blessing it had been to Rev. Mr. Acht. They 
did it, and with surprising results. It was 
found that I had a normal amount of hydro- 
chloric acid in that stomach of mine ! What a 
startling discovery! 

The physician who made the analysis was 
named Simpson. He made me swallow a glass 
of water and lie down. Then he thumped 
around on my stomach and listened to the water 
splashing in it. He declared that my stomach 
was in its normal position ! There was no pro- 
lapse, no dilatation. I felt like shouting for 
joy. The next moment I was puzzled. How 
w r as it I had dyspepsia if the stomach was of the 
right shape and doing the right amount of 
work? Dr. Simpson said that probably my 
dyspepsia was due to a derangement of the solar 
plexus. I told him how the doctors had diag- 
nosed "a-pepsia." When I described how Dr. 
Brickner had poured a quart of water down the 



82 CURED 



stomach to bring up the meal of a few ounces, 
Dr. Simpson looked disgusted. 

'That is a perfectly pre-pos-ter-ous thing to 
do!" he exclaimed. "How can one analyze a 
test-meal thus diluted? One should not pour 
down a drop of water, but take the meal as it 
is found. That is the object of the test-meal 
process. If the meal does not come out readily, 
the tube should be lowered an inch or two." 

Then the light dawned on me! Dr. Brick- 
ner's fiasco was on a par with that of Dr. 
Plunkett and his brave Alabama ally, Plimhim- 
mon. None of them had known how to empty 
a stomach with the stomach tube! 

I felt particularly enraged at this man Brick- 
ner, because he ought to have known better, as 
he told me he had studied at Battle Creek, 
where the use of the stomach tube was prac- 
ticed diligently. To think of all those months 
of dieting and worrying over my apepsia and 
hypopepsia and two inches prolapse of the 
stomach, the wearing of that tortuous stomach 
uplifter and the tight-fitting "Umschlag," all 
quite unnecessary. 

"The nerves have a peculiar influence over 
the stomach," explained Dr. Simpson. "Shake- 
speare, that wonderful chronicler of great 



CURED 83 

events, that astute reader of the human heart, 
knew this. In Scene 2, Act III, of Henry 
VIII, the king says to the cardinal, 'Read o'er 
this ; and after, this : and then to breakfast with 
what appetite you have!' And when Wolsey 
read the story of the king's anger, it is safe to 
say he was not hungry. One cannot worry and 
still have a good digestion. A man oppressed 
with debt or other worries is likely to get nerv- 
ous dyspepsia." 

We talked over my "Nature Cure." Dr. 
Simpson endorsed the idea. I then asked if he 
thought the stomach could be toned up by swal- 
lowing a rubber tube, in which a tiny electric 
light had been inserted (as I had heard was 
done at certain sanitaria), making a glow- 
worm of myself. He said : "To be frank with 
you, I think the nature cure would do you much 
more good." 

So I continued southward, and in less than a 
day's travel I was in the mild climate of west- 
ern Idaho. An artist, named Don Carlos, 
agreed to let me share his ranch, on which were 
two cabins, four miles from the railroad. He 
was much interested in my case, because he had 
read many health magazines and had been in- 
terested in fad cures. 



84 CURED 

Don Carlos moved to the lower cabin. I was 
left in the upper one. It was pretty well 
screened from view, so I decided it would be 
an admirable place for my nature cure. As the 
weather became warmer, I went closer and 
closer to nature in matters of garb, until I did 
not have on enough clothes to wad a gun. I 
rejoiced in the realization that every one of the 
five million pores of my body was having a 
fresh-air outing twenty-four hours a day. 

I wondered whether it would not be even 
more agreeable and, perhaps, more healthy to 
walk in this natural garb instead of keeping my- 
self cooped up in the cabin. I had nearly deter- 
mined to make this change when one day there 
came a sudden knock at the door of my cabin. 
I threw it open, expecting to see the familiar 
form of Don Carlos. Instead, I beheld a tall 
gentleman in clerical attire. He uttered an ex- 
clamation of surprise and turned his head 
away. I recognized him; he was a Jesuit 
father in charge of a neighboring Indian mis- 
sion. 

"Where are your clothes ?" he asked sternly. 

I replied that they were put away in my 
trunk. I tried to explain about the "Nature 
Cure," telling him an eminent medical writer 



CURED 85 

declared that to wear clothes is a very dirty 
habit. 

"You are worse than a savage," said the 
Jesuit, with still averted head. "Put on some 
clothes. ,, 

To please him I picked up the nearest ap- 
proach to a garment that I could lay my hands 
on — a sheet from my cot — and wound it around 
me. With a pair of sandals I thought I should 
have looked rather classic. Thus garbed, I in- 
vited the Jesuit father to step into my cabin, 
but he replied hastily that he was on his way to 
the post-office and wished to know whether I 
had any letters to mail. Then he left me in a 
hurry. 

I told Don Carlos about the incident. He 
roared with laughter, finally telling me that the 
Jesuit had come out from France to Idaho to 
"civilize the poor Indians," and had begun the 
work by making them wear more clothes ! 

"Never mind," said Don Carlos, finally. "I 
know a cure superior to air baths. It is called 
the 'Roof Sun Bath/ and it is good for the 
spinal column." 

Don Carlos remarked that in simplicity is 
strength. He said that one of his cousins, a 
nervous wreck, had been restored to health by 



86 CURED 



the best and cheapest agency for toning up the 
nerves — the sun's rays — which are far superior 
to the Kaiser Wilhelm-King Edward Electric 
Light Baths. He continued: 'The world- 
famed Dr. Rudolph Virchow, German anthro- 
pologist, pathologist and politician, summed up 
the best treatment of nerves and other dis- 
orders in this phrase, 'Enter Sunlight, Depart 
Disease.' " 

Don Carlos said that the way to carry out the 
Virchow program was not merely to open the 
doors and windows and pull up the shades, but 
to lie naked in the sun and let the rays beat 
down upon the spine. 

Following his suggestion, I put a blanket on 
the roof of the cabin, used a small ladder to 
climb up, and took the bath at ten o'clock one 
fine morning. I had a long raincoat handy in 
case anyone passed within sight of the cabin 
and disagreed with the theory that the skin is 
quite the proper covering for the body. Don 
Carlos warned me to wrap a towel around my 
head, as he said the head is too delicate to stand 
those intense baths which are perquisites of the 
spinal column. The sun bath was very sooth- 
ing. Lying down was soothing in itself, and 
the warm rays of the sun were grateful to the 



CURED 87 

spine. In time, no doubt, those baths would do 
me a world of good. 

Each bath lasted twenty minutes. After tak- 
ing about ten of the baths, I told Don Carlos I 
felt they were doing me good. I seemed less 
nervous. It was true, my back was probably 
badly freckled and somewhat tanned, but the 
baths had been gentle and the sun's rays at ten 
a. m. are not very fierce. 

One morning, as I lay stretched out on the 
roof like a chicken on a broiler, suddenly I felt 
a shooting pain under the left shoulder-blade 
that made me think I had come in contact with 
a coal of fire. Was it the snapping of a nerve 
cord? Had the sun dried out the string and 
broken it ? I yelled in pain, and Don Carlos ap- 
peared, jumping through the window to get to 
the ladder in quick time. 

"What's the matter?" he shouted. 

I continued to yell. He came up the ladder 
and on to the roof. Then he saw a red spot on 
my shoulder. He took in the situation at a 
glance, and said, "You've been stung by a bee, 
wasp or hornet. Keep quiet. I will go to the 
kitchen and get some bicarbonate of soda for 
the wound." 



88 CURED 



From that day the sun baths took on a dan- 
gerous aspect. 

I gave up the Virchow doctrine, returning to 
my air baths and resting most of the time. 
Then one day I met a doctor on horseback, and 
he gave me a suggestion for a new cure, which 
I took with alacrity. 

Dr. Markham had studied in New York, and 
when he found out I had lived in the East, we 
had quite a chat. I told him I had some kind 
of nervous dyspeptic trouble which baffled 
science. When he heard of the years I had 
spent seeking a cure, he exclaimed: "If I were 
you, I would knuckle down to hard labor. Na- 
ture will force itself to make you well. ,, 

He told me that near the little town where 
he practiced lived an Eastern man who had 
come out to the Far West to get cured of a ter- 
rible trouble — "closing up of his arteries" — and 
that hard labor in the forestry service, blazing 
trails and building log cabins was curing him 
after all the sanitaria of the East had failed to 
do him any good. 

"I should like very much to see this man," I 
said with sudden interest. 

"Well, Fll take you out to the camp," said 
Dr. Markham. 



CURED 89 

He drove me out to the camp where the East- 
erner with the "closing arteries" was taking the 
hard-labor cure. He stopped cutting wood 
when he saw me and talked of his cures. He 
had spent much time (and money) at sanitaria, 
resting on sunny balconies and taking medi- 
cines. He had been to the seashore, the moun- 
tains and to "Idle Hour" hotels. No, he had 
not obtained relief until brought out to the piny 
woods and made to work. At first he had had 
an up-hill fight, but he was getting along splen- 
didly. 

As we went back the superintendent of the 
camp said, "That man Perkins came out here as 
weak as a kitten and as scared as a mouse. 
When meal time came around and we put some 
fried pork, baked potatoes and other life savers 
before him, Perkins would have none of them, 
but squeaked, 'I want my peptonized egg.' I 
had to be rough with the fellow, and said 
firmly, 'Shut up, you son of a gun ! Sow belly 
is good enough for you. If you don't eat it, you 
can starve!' He cried for his peptonized egg 
for two or three meals, but at last sheer hunger 
made Perkins come around to our grub. Soon 
we had him working with a hatchet and axe 
and ready to eat anything." 



90 CURED 

I returned to the ranch with the belief that 
perhaps I had been mollycoddling myself. I 
needed some of the Perkins' treatment. I told 
Don Carlos I was determined to take the hard- 
labor cure. He encouraged me. My first 
duties were to put up a chicken wire fence for 
Don Carlos' chickens. I worked hard digging 
a post hole, lying down at frequent intervals to 
rest. I made very slow progress. Finally, I 
grappled with the problem of tacking up the 
wire. That was easier; but I felt too weak to 
continue, so I returned to my cabin and rested 
on a cot. 

I wrote Dr. Simpson about the hard-labor 
cure; he replied that it would fix me up if I 
would avoid becoming exhausted. I tried hard 
to work the next day, but I did not seem able 
to digest enough food to aid me to recuperate 
from the exhaustion that had set in. I at- 
tempted to saw wood, but with the same results 
of extreme weakness all over. I would lie down 
on the ground for a few minutes and then go 
back to work. Gradually the minutes were 
turned into hours. For weeks and weeks I tried 
to get good results from the "hard-labor 
cure," and chewed my food very thoroughly; 
but I experienced much stomach distress. Then 



CURED 91 



came the hot weather, one hundred and ten de- 
grees in the shade. Of course, I could not do 
hard labor in that heat. I was thoroughly tired 
of "hard labor." 

During several days of the very hot weather 
I remained in the upper cabin, resting most of 
the time. I tried to think of something else to 
do; hard work did not seem to perform the 
wonders for me that it had done for Mr. Per- 
kins, a postgraduate of the peptonized egg diet. 

About nine o'clock one morning, as I lay in 
bed, I noticed a pair of tiny, bright eyes which 
at once held my rapt attention. A rattlesnake 
was about to share my cabin with me. The 
great heat, following the long rains of the win- 
ter and spring, had forced the weeds upward, 
so that they surrounded the cabin and grew 
through the wide cracks in the floor. And com- 
ing up with them was a baby rattler! Fortu- 
nately, I had a loaded twenty-two rifle hanging 
on the wall near my cot. I reached for it and, 
taking good aim, I popped the rattler right in 
the neck. He dropped as though a jugular vein 
had been struck. Just then there was a rust- 
ling, rattling sound, and I wondered if I were 
in for a fight with a whole nest of the terrible 
snakes. My blood began to curdle ; I had read 



92 CURED 

of the agonizing death from a rattlesnake bite. 

I reloaded my gun and, sure enough, up 
popped another head. I fired, but missed. I 
shot again. The rattling army sought cover. 
I jumped up, put on my slippers, a pair of 
trousers and a coat. I was feeling shaky. The 
suddenness of it all had given me no time to 
think of my nervous troubles; but now I felt 
nervous. 

After waiting a few minutes, the head of a 
big rattler popped up through the boards. She 
was the mammy rattler, no doubt, seeking ven- 
geance. How I deplored my negligence in not 
having a good floor put in that cabin! I had 
thought the old floor conducive to good ventil- 
ation. It was too conducive. I banged away 
at the old rattler and was sure I hit her. I did 
not kill her. She escaped. I decided to escape, 
too. Making a dash for the door, I had to pass 
before the rattlers' firing line. As I went out, 
I noticed that the weeds were very high. Ter- 
ror-stricken, I pushed my way through them, 
and whom should I come across but the mammy 
rattler I thought I had hit ! Cold shivers went 
down my spine. The snake glared at me, but 
she did not rattle. She prepared to coil. I ran 
all the way to Don Carlos' tent. 



CURED 93 

"What is the matter ?" he asked in surprise. 
"Another hornet ?" 

He gave me a drink of whisky and made me 
lie down on a carpet in the tent. 

When I told Don Carlos what had happened, 
he consoled me with the remark that sometimes 
a great shock has been found to be a cure for 
nerves. Perhaps the shock would cure me! 
I waited several days, but the cure did not ar- 
rive. I felt a great aversion to the rattlesnake 
cabin and determined never to return to it. 



CHAPTER VI 

Chiropractic Pressure — Rest in Bed — Nitrog- 
enous Diet — Dilated Stomach Treatment. 

I HAD had enough of the Far West, I was 
sure of it. My experiences in Alabama 
had been sad, but those in Colorado, Utah, 
Montana, Washington and Idaho — had they 
been less sad ? I yearned to see the East again. 

Don Carlos said he would have my trunk 
taken out of that cabin during the night, as the 
rattlers would then be asleep.- A man was se- 
lected to do the job who was absolutely fearless 
and as strong as Sampson. He was a French- 
Canadian, and very devout. After removing 
the trunk, he said to me: "Before you go East, 
call on an old brother at the mission not far 
from here. This man has given good advice to 
some of my friends, and he may help you. He 
has heard of your peculiar nervous trouble. ,, 

So the Canadian took me in a carriage to call 
on Brother Bernard. 

Brother Bernard congratulated me on my 
escape from the rattlers. He asked me my 

(94) 









CURED 95 



symptoms. I told him that I not only was very 
weak, but had a nervous stomach disorder. I 
could not sit still in church, so great were my 
fidgets or feeling of restlessness. 

Brother Bernard then related an incident of 
"monastic fidgets" described in the life of Saint 
Benedict. He said, "While Saint Benedict was 
at Subiaco he noticed at prayer time that one 
of his monks was in the habit of leaving the 
church when the other monks began to pray. 
Finally, Saint Benedict saw a little black boy 
tugging at the monk's sleeve. None of the 
other monks could see the little devil. The saint 
awaited his opportunity, and the next evening, 
when the monk started down the aisle, Abbot 
Benedict stood at the door and struck the 
fidgety religious a blow with his fist. The lit- 
tle black boy departed with alacrity, and the 
monk, with proper humility, returned to his 
pew. The little boy bothered the monk no 
more/' 

Of course, I was interested in this story, but 
I wondered who would find out if I were being 
led by a little black boy. The old brother con- 
tinued, "Do you feel this terrible restlessness 
and inability to sit still when you are in a lec- 
ture room, too, just as in church ?" 



96 CURED 

I said that I did. 

"And in the theater?" 

"Yes, in the theater; I have not been able 
to enjoy a show for several years." 

"Ah, ah!" exclaimed the brother, " then I 
know it is not the little black boy in your case, 
for he never would lead you out of the thea- 
ter." 

On leaving the brother, he advised me to eat 
a little meat, and said he would pray that I 
might eventually find a cure. "There is one in 
store for you, but God may sorely try your 
patience," he added, "before you find it." 

The next day I was on my way East. At 
meal time I did not go into the diner, but ate 
sparingly of some predigested food. 

"Are you sick?" asked a big, husky-looking 
man, with a long, brown mustache and clear, 
sparkling eyes. 

I told him I had been somewhat upset and 
had taken thirty-five cures. He was much in- 
terested and said that he himself had studied 
"the art of tinkering with mankind." I asked 
him if he were a physician. He replied, "I am 
not called a doctor of medicine, but a doctor of 
chiropractic." He gave me his card. I read, 
"John Henneberger, D. C." He told me all 



CURED 97 



about his art. " 'Chiro' for hand, from the 
Greek," he said, "indicates that we use our 
hands in giving treatments. We do not uncork 
a bottle and fill you up with calomel, morphine, 
strychnine, arsenic and nerve-destroying bro- 
mides. All those things are of the modern, 
pharmaceutical methods and are more danger- 
ous than the ancient pharmacy which consisted 
of leeches, bull-tail nervine, cupping and witch 
broth. We chiropractitioners have learned bet- 
ter. We work on the spine." 

Here I interrupted him by saying I had had 
a little treatment for the spine in the way of 
solar baths and hornet punctures. 

He paid no attention to my remark and con- 
tinued with the flow of oratory of a Demos- 
thenes: "Here is a picture of the spinal col- 
umn. We work on it. All maladies are due to 
luxated vertebrae — that is, vertebrae getting 
too close to each other, and so stopping the flow 
of nervous energy. You can cause this trouble 
in the vertebrae by strain ; even turning over in 
bed at night may do it. When you dam up this 
precious, life-giving stream, you get sick; and 
when you open it, you get well." 

"Is this treatment popular ?" I asked. 

"There are twenty-three million people in the 



98 CURED 



United States who disbelieve in drugs," he an- 
swered, "and many of 'em are heading for our 
camp!" 

Dr. Henneberger put his hand under my coat 
and said, "Just let me feel of your back." He 
rushed his fingers up, touching each button of 
the spinal column. Suddenly he exclaimed: "I 
have it! Here, between the third and fourth 
vertebrae, there is something out of 'whack/ 
and this has caused all your troubles. I had a 
similar misfortune, and came out West crying 
with hysteria; but a chiropractitioner fixed me 
up. Look at me now !" 

He was indeed a healthy looking specimen 
of humanity and a good advertisement for his 
cure. 

After he had removed his hand from my 
back, he asked me to feel the button, bump or 
knob, myself. I put my hand up my back to 
the point indicated, with some difficulty, for 
once realizing the troubles a woman has with 
a princess gown and no maid. Two bones 
seemed closer than they ought to be, judging by 
the distance between the others. 

The chiro man continued: "That's all there 
is the matter with you. You can go to sani- 
taria and take cures all over the country, but 



CURED 99 

without relieving that pressure you will never 
become a well man. No, sir, I have seen too 
many of them." Then he gave me some liter- 
ature to look over while he went to dinner. 

I read the literature, and was interested in 
a headline on one page : 

"Blind Man Struck By Tennis Ball Re- 
covers Sight !" 
And another : 
"Man Falls From Bridge Cured of Liver 
Trouble!" 
And a third : 
"Nervous Wreck Falls Downstairs and 
Gets Well!" 

Dr. Henneberger returned to the charge and, 
picking up a paper which I had bought, said: 
"Here is a story on the front page about a 
United States Senator in Massachusetts dying 
of typhoid fever. I could cure him in a few 
minutes if I were allowed to press on his ver- 
tebrae and let loose some of that pent-up energy 
that would kill off the fever germs." 

"Are you quite sure that this clogging up 
of the vertebrae has caused his typhoid fever ?" 
I asked. 

"Quite sure," he replied, with decision. 



100 CURED 

"Then why haven't I typhoid, if my verte- 
brae are clogged ?" I retorted, looking at him 
earnestly. 

Dr. Henneberger seemed puzzled for just an 
instant; but he soon rallied to the charge. 
"You would get it if you were not so very 
careful in your diet. There is not one man in 
a million who eats like you." 

Dr. Henneberger said he had his office in 
Minneapolis, and when the train reached that 
city he wanted me to take a treatment. He 
would not charge me a cent for curing me if I 
would tell all the other newspapermen I knew 
of my wonderful cure. This statement made 
me have some confidence in the man. I saw him 
talking to other passengers in the car. I noted 
with keen interest their look of sudden alarm 
as he whispered something in their ears about 
their vertebrae being out of whack or "align- 
ment" (as typewritermen say). He said they 
needed powerful pressure to whip them back 
into line. This fascinating man soon had his 
hands running up and down a half dozen spinal 
columns belonging to utter strangers. 

I found later that Henneberger had promised 
to cure one man of his rheumatism, another of 
his diabetes and a third of catarrh of the colon 



CURED 101 

— all these ills to be wiped out by "pressure." 
But I met one passenger on the train who was 
a believer in chiropractic methods. He said the 
pressure treatment once had cured him of a 
severe cold. He admitted, on further question- 
ing, the chiro man had nearly pulled his head 
off. 

When we arrived at Minneapolis I managed 
to get my baggage held over and went with 
Henneberger to his office. Perhaps here was 
the cure that the good and holy brother prom- 
ised would end my misery. 

The bloodless surgeon and I took the ele- 
vator. I felt pretty shaky, but he held my arm 
and assured me I would soon feel strong. "In 
three weeks we'll have you eating pork and 
beans," he whispered in my ear. 

Henneberger had cozy offices. He intro- 
duced me to his assistant, a short, stocky fellow, 
with a bull-dog jaw, a toboggan-slide forehead, 
thick lips and a tooth-brush moustache. His 
shoulders looked like those of an oarsman, and 
his hands — those hands! They hung from 
arms as long as canoe paddles, and the knuckles 
of the hands were as big as pullet eggs. This 
assistant looked well able to assist Henne- 
berger in any pressure to be done by hand. 



102 CURED 



"Now, take off your coat and shirt," said 
Henneberger to me, "and lie on this." 

"This" looked like a combination of log, 
cross and vaulting apparatus. It was T-shaped 
and broad enough to support a man lying on 
his stomach. 

Then Henneberger asked me : "Which of us 
would you rather have apply the pressure?" 

It did not take me a fraction of a second to 
answer, "you," remembering the assistant's 
pullet-egg knuckles. 

So Henneberger began. He sat on me and 
put his clenched fists on the offending verte- 
bral region. When he found he had good pur- 
chase power, he pressed. It was like a pile- 
driver coming down. The blood rushed to my 
head, it shot into my face; I felt a tingling sen- 
sation all over. I was dazed, dazzled and dizzy. 
I was about to faint after the first shock. I 
wondered if my back had been broken ? Surely 
the vertebrae had been separated. I arose with 
difficulty and asked for water. As I drank it 
I thought I caught a glimpse of a sarcastic, 
cruel grin on the face of the assistant. 

"You will get used to it; this is only the first 
treatment. You will feel better after a few 



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CURED 103 



more like this," said Henneberger in his 
smoothest tones. 

Only the first? Well, it would be the last. 
I told him in plain terms I thought the pressure 
too violent for me. Henneberger took me to 
my hotel and put me to bed. He stayed awhile 
in my room, and said that he wished to treat me 
further, and that he would lend me money if I 
needed any to defray my expenses while staying 
in Minneapolis. 

But I had made up my mind to hurry on with 
my journey east. 

"I think I shall next try falling off a bridge 
or coming in contact with a tennis ball," I said 
faintly, as Henneberger started for the door. 

I felt worse than ever, and determined to be 
very cautions about allowing either M.D.'s or 
D.C.'s to experiment on me. I remained in bed 
for the rest of that day, and on the next con- 
tinued my journey east. 

Soon I found myself again in Baltimore, the 
city where I had worked as a newspaperman, 
and where, three years before, I had gone to 
my first infirmary. 

I had lost confidence in Dr. Dorr, so I de- 
termined to call on one or two of the "best 
physicians" and sample their advice. I called 



104 CURED 

up a Dr. Thompson by 'phone. A lady an- 
swered. She said that the doctor was out of 
the city on his vacation. I told her I deeply 
regretted to hear it, as I had crossed the conti- 
nent to consult him. 

"What is the matter with you?" she asked in 
tones of feminine sweetness. Her southern ac- 
cent sounded pleasant to my ears. 

I told her that I had some kind of dyspepsia, 
and that in Minneapolis a chiropractitioner had 
assured me that my back was broken. 

The lady asked me where I was, and I an- 
swered that I was standing at the telephone at 
a hotel. A ripple of laughter greeted this state- 
ment. "Why, your back is certainly not broken 
if you are able to stand up." 

This remark was most illuminating. Per- 
haps she was right. People with broken backs 
could not stand up. Still, those vertebrae? A 
pair of them was too closely linked. 

I asked the ladv what her learned husband 
charged for diagnosis. She replied, "Well, you 
know you cannot expect good advice for two 
dollars." 

I had to admit I expected it for that sum, 
but had never received it. Mrs. Thompson ad- 
vised me to call on Dr. Jenkins, another noted 



CURED 105 

physician who was taking care of Dr. TVs prac- 
tice while he was on his vacation. I decided to 
see Dr. Jenkins, and in a hurry, for I felt I had 
not long to live. I called up Dr. Jenkins and 
told him I was tired of two-dollar talks and that 
I wished some really high-priced, valuable con- 
versation. He said he would charge ten dol- 
lars for a diagnosis, if I would go to his office. 
He charged more to go to one's house or hotel. 
Finally, when I told him I needed him right 
away, he said he would come to me. 

Dr. Jenkins was as good as his word, and was 
soon sitting at the foot of my bed. He seemed 
most scientific. He told me to lie down on a 
couch while he questioned me about my history. 
I began at the beginning and gave him a bird's- 
eye view of the "cures." His time was very 
precious and I dared give him only an outline. 
I told him how I had lingered on Dr. Brickner's 
test-meal fiasco, and how Zabinski, of Cali- 
fornia, had discovered an absence of hydro- 
chloric acid after Brickner had diluted the 
stomach contents with a Johnstown flood. Dr. 
Jenkins frowned at this part of the recital, and 
said peevishly, "Go on, go on!" Jenkins was 
a "regular" physician, and he could not bear to 
hear strictures on members of his profession. 



106 CURED 



When, however, I rehearsed the Henneberger 
Pressure Horror and how the "chiro" man had 
promised that after three weeks of his pressure 
I would be able to digest pork and beans, Jen- 
kins roared with laughter. 

Discussing the hot baths I had taken, Jen- 
kins said that all "eliminative" treatment of 
that sort was contraindicated in my case. 
Then I began to flush with anger to think that 
Brickner had insisted on boiling and baking me 
when my whole nature rebelled in protest. 

Jenkins began to examine me. He did it in 
a peculiar way, refraining from test-meals, rub- 
ber tubes and silver hammers. He thumped 
my chest and made me cross my legs and shake 
hands with myself, tugging violently as he 
struck my legs above the knees to see what he 
called the "jerks." I later discovered this was 
the method in vogue with the best men, the kind 
who charge ten dollars, not two. Jenkins stud- 
ied the geography of my back, and when I 
pointed out the two vertebrae whose proximity 
had made the "chiro" man announce I needed 
pressure, he said there was absolutely nothing 
in this theory and that he had seen other men 
in the best of health who had just such an ar- 
rangement of their vertebrae. 



CURED 107 



"Then my back is not broken?" I shrieked 
with joy. 

"Sh-h-h-h!" said Jenkins. "No, it isn't; it 
never was, and I hope it never will be. Cheer 
up, you have no organic trouble. You have seen 
too many doctors; some of them you ought 
never to have seen. You must now learn to 
forget all about yourself. Your trouble is nerv- 
ous dyspepsia, and you will have to remain quiet 
in bed three months, at least." 

I told him I would. Then he sent me to an 
infirmary, and I was amused to see that it was 
the same place I had visited three years before. 
I found myself so weak I could hardly sit up. 
I felt that "all-gone feeling" intensified; I 
thought I should collapse. I was hurried to bed, 
and a nurse I had never seen before took my 
temperature. I was given a more liberal diet 
than dried bread. I had eggs and cream and a 
little butter. I was depressed. Similar treat- 
ment before had never given me lasting im- 
provement. It was not a great effort for me to 
remain in bed, I felt so weak, so worn out. 

I complained to one of the physicians that I 
was taking the same cure as meted out to me 
three years before; but the medical man in- 
sisted that it would have fixed me up three years 



108 CURED 



before, had I remained in bed instead of going 
to hotels and resorts. 

After a few weeks the cure became very tire- 
some. I yearned to play cards like the other 
patients, to read books, to sit up, and to walk 
around. When Dr. Jenkins called on me I 
sulked. Jenkins said I was making lots of im- 
provement. I assured him I could not notice it. 

One day the physicians at the infirmary had 
a consultation and soon I found myself taking 
the "stuffing" cure. Its scientific name was ni- 
trogenous diet. 

The new cure was not invisible nor occult — 
it could be seen and felt in the five meals which 
came my way each day. Were I a goose, with 
my feet nailed to a box as the food was rammed 
down my throat with a stick, I could not be tak- 
ing a surer road to dilation of the liver, pro- 
lapse of the stomach or extension of the spare 
ribs. I began to fill up rapidly and painfully. 
Here was the regime: 

8:00 a. m. — Oatmeal, beefsteak, eggs, corn- 
bread, white bread, potatoes, stewed fruit and 
coffee. 

10:30 a. m. — Two eggs (raw) whipped in 
milk. 

12:30 p. m. — Soup, roast beef, celery, 



CURED 109 

mastied potatoes, peas, beans, asparagus, rice, 
pie, coffee, tea or milk. 

3 :00 p. m. — Two raw eggs whippe3 in milk. 

6 :00 p. m. — Chicken, rabbit, omelet or stew, 
various vegetables, pudding, bread, butter, 
cocoa, stewed fruit, cakes, etc. 

9 :00 p. m. — Cup of hot milk. 

I resented this kind of "stuffing cure." I was 
not exercising, I was lying in bed, and yet I 
was expected to digest five meals a day ! It was 
preposterous. Every time I saw myself in the 
looking-glass I could see I was developing what 
a certain health food specialist calls the "po- 
tato lip of the Irish, the onion chin of the 
Basque and the sweet mouth of the American 
youth." 

Finally, I mustered up enough courage to 
protest against these meals between meals. The 
nurses who brought the whipped eggs in milk 
were very beautiful, but for all that I protested. 
They generally had their way, however. I had 
the consolation of finding I was right. After a 
few weeks the numerous meals started up a fer- 
mentation in the epigastrium that even mag- 
nesia would not allay. 

There was one feature that resigned me to 
the cure — namely, the alcohol dorsal rub, given 



110 CURED 

by a beautiful nurse, whose velvety finger tips 
radiated restfulness. The vertebrae were 
thrilled every evening at five o'clock. 

After several months of the heavy-feeding 
plan I grew so ill that I thought I must die. I 
had morbid attacks of blushing, a peculiar, 
weak, all-gone sensation in the wrists, at the pit 
of the stomach — yes, all over. There was a 
hurried consultation of physicians. One of the 
orderlies at the hospital violated all rules of hos- 
pital etiquette by whispering to me: "I don't 
believe a soul knows what is the matter with 
you." 

A new cure was, however, the result of their 
consultation. 

The new cure consisted of lying on the right 
side several hours after meals. It was a pe- 
culiar cure, but I was told it aided the stomach 
to empty itself. 

I was allowed to escape some of those meals, 
and I improved slightly. The doctors decided 
to let me sit up for a few hours each day, hop- 
ing this would do me good. It did, but my 
progress was so slow that the doctors decided 
to give me a test-meal to see if it revealed any- 
thing. I swallowed the rubber tube with the 



CURED 111 

same old difficulty. I never learned the result 
of the stomach analysis. 

One day a young doctor from Wyoming who 
was "practicing" at the infirmary told me he 
would like to "inflate" my stomach. I had to 
swallow two liquids, which produced a terrible 
commotion. The stomach walls seemed pushed 
out and stretched beyond endurance. The 
Wyoming doctor had already marked off with 
a blue pencil the lower border of my stomach, 
as he had found it with the aid of a stethoscope ; 
then he marked off the stomach after inflation. 
I noticed that the inflation had been a success, 
for the new border was quite a distance below 
the first marking. The doctor retired to a room 
and drew a large diagram of his discoveries. 
The next day I saw the Wyoming doctor and 
said rather peevishly, "I don't see why I don't 
get well. I have been in this place five months." 

"You don't get well because your stomach is 
just three times as big as it ought to be," was 
his reply. Then he added, "I might as well be 
frank with you ; a surgical operation will alone 
give you relief. You have marked dilation of 
the stomach." 

I shivered. He continued, smiling: "Cheer 



112 CURED 



up, you ought not to balk at surgery, after all 
the things you have been through." 

I told the night nurse, a beautiful Nova 
Scotian blonde, with large blue eyes and the 
rosiest of cheeks, that I was upset by the news 
that I had so terrible a trouble as permanent 
dilation of the stomach. Instead of sympathiz- 
ing with me, she said firmly, "You ought to be 
thankful that they know what is the matter with 
you !" I pondered over her remark. So these 
great doctors had been dancing around me for 
nearly half a year in ignorance of what ailed 
me! 

Two days passed, and finally a famous sur- 
geon, Dr. Binney, examined me. He looked 
at the blue pencil marks on my abdomen and 
exclaimed in a breezy manner, "My, what an 
excursion !" 

Should I let the great surgeon operate? No, 
a thousand times no. That journey on the 
wheeled cot to the elevator and then being shot 
up to the fifth floor to meet white-aproned, ten- 
nis-slippered scalpel-wielders was too terrible 
to think of. 

Still I had to think of it every time the 
Wyoming doctor passed my door. I thought I 
saw a yearning look in his eyes. The surgeons 



CURED 113 

were anxious to have an "exploratory opera- 
tion." I talked the matter over with several 
nurses. One was serving her first year at the 
infirmary. She shared my aversion to the 
knife. "Never, never in this world would those 
surgeons get me on that table and stick a knife 
into me," she said, with a shudder. Then I 
talked the matter over with a third-year nurse. 
She had done many week's service in the oper- 
ating room. "They could operate on me any 
time it was thought necessary," she declared, 
with great coolness. "Why, in these days op- 
erations are absolutely aseptic and, besides, Dr. 
Binney is such a sweet man." 

A sweet man, indeed ! Thinking the matter 
over one morning when I felt like writing fare- 
well letters to all my relatives and friends, I 
suddenly had an inspiration. Dr. Jenkins was 
considered one of the world's great diagnosti- 
cians. He had diagnosed my case as "nervous 
dyspepsia." The doctors at the infirmary said 
it was "dilation of the stomach." I knew from 
my book on the stomach that there was a vast 
difference between the two conditions. I would 
write Jenkins and tell him those young medicos 
were upsetting his diagnosis! I wrote him a 
sensational letter with my old-time newspaper 



114 CURED 

vigor. He came to see me in a hurry. He was 
plainly perturbed. He summoned the Wy- 
oming medico and in his presence dilated my 
stomach. The process was as painful as ever. 
The Wyoming man seemed to think he had been 
vindicated. Oh, not at all. Jenkins, standing 
out in the center of the room, with all the dig- 
nity of a professor lecturing his class, said : "I 
still maintain that this is a case of atonic dys- 
pepsia." 

"You don't think there is obstruction near 
the pylorus ?" asked the Wyoming chap, look- 
ing crestfallen. 

"I do not," answered Dr. Jenkins, emphat- 
ically; "I think the distension is due to the 
atonic condition of the stomach walls. " 

Out walked the Wyoming surgeon, leaving 
Jenkins in possession of the field. I felt a hun- 
dred per cent, better right away. 

"Hurrah!" I exclaimed, "then I shall not 
have to resort to a surgical operation by that 
sweet man, Dr. Binney?" 

"Certainly not," replied Jenkins; "we shall 
not resort to surgery yet." 

What a relief ! Jenkins was of the opinion I 
had better leave the infirmary in a few days. 
I protested that I was too weak, but he said 






CURED U5 

there was no reason why I should not be able 
to walk. And, wonderful to relate, in four or 
five days I did walk out ; fear of surgeons gave 
me strength. 



CHAPTER VII 

No Worry — Black Coffee — Developing the 
Primitive Muscles — Rain Baths — Power 
Through Repose — Kneipp's Dew Baths for the 
Feet. 

I WENT direct to Dr. Jenkins' office. He 
asked me if I had been given any prescrip- 
tions at the infirmary. I replied that one 
of the young doctors had written one. He read 
it and said, "Well, you needn't take it." We 
then discussed cures. I asked Dr. Jenkins if he 
thought a sea voyage would do me good. "As 
you have not regained your health on land, 
perhaps you would at sea," he answered. But 
he cautioned me not to travel just yet; rather 
to live in the country and see him occasionally. 
I found a suitable place in the country. At 
first I had much trouble in eating anything, 
since I continued to suffer with that old-time 
choking sensation in the throat and distress in 
the stomach; but gradually this wore off and 
I began to gain in strength. I walked each 
day, increasing the distance until I could walk 

(H6) 






CURED 117 



two miles. On Sundays I went to a church in 
the village. The priest had interesting ideas 
on health. He asked me to dine with him, but 
would not let me eat pie or ice cream. 

He said he could see that I was very ner- 
vous, very fidgety, and suggested that I should 
take the "No Worry Cure." This cure con- 
sisted in abstaining from all "perplexing cares." 
"You must emulate the example of Father 
Beauregard, of Philadelphia," he said; "he 
never worries about anything. If anyone 
should rush up to him and say, 'Father Beaure- 
gard, your house is on fire, your library is in 
flames and your best silk cassock is in ashes/ 
he would not become excited. He would reply, 
'W-e-1-1, we shall see what is to be done/ ,: The 
priest told me that I made thousands of need- 
less motions with my hands and feet, and that 
I had the peculiar habit of fanning myself even 
in cool weather. He recommended me to start 
the "No Worry Cure" by counting ten before 
changing my position or picking anything up. 
"Learn to sit still for ten seconds and gradually 
increase the time," was another of his counsels. 

I returned to my boarding house determined 
to put the new cure into immediate practice. 
That evening at table when I was asked to pass 



118 CURED 

the bread, instead of darting my right hand to 
the plate I paused and began counting. By the 
time I had counted "five" some one else passed 
the bread. The boarders looked at me oddly. I 
kept up the counting until it became almost a 
mania. I could think of nothing but "one, two, 
three, four, five." These figures bothered me in 
the day time ; they haunted me at night. When 
I went to church the next Sunday I found my- 
self just as restless as ever, and only with the 
greatest difficulty could I remain in the church, 
and then had to stand near the door. The "No 
Worry Cure" was not proving a success. For- 
tunately, the morning paper I read suggested a 
new cure of great repute for nervous disorders. 
It consisted in taking a small cup of strong, 
black coffee right after meals. 

I asked the landlady if I might have a demi- 
tasse of black coffee at each meal. She seemed 
amazed. "What ! black coffee for a dyspeptic ?" 
I said it was a cure recommended in a morning 
paper by a well-known writer on "How to Get 
W r ell and Keep Well." I told the landlady that 
in the course of a lecture on hygiene a certain 
noted food expert had denounced coffee, and 
that thereupon a fine-looking lady arose and 
disagreed with him. She insisted that, al- 



CURED 119 



though a large cup of weak coffee promoted fer- 
mentation and injured the stomach, a small cup 
of black coffee (without cream) had cured her 
of a long-standing nervous disorder. 

I tried the "demi-tasse de cafe noir" cure. It 
did not do me much good. I still was nervous 
and found it impossible to sit quietly. 

Dr. Jenkins thought that hill climbing might 
do me more good. 

I was predisposed in favor of this cure by- 
reading in a health magazine that it developed 
the primitive muscles and that it was used ex- 
tensively at sanitaria to help patients who did 
not improve by hydropathic measures. 

These "primitive" muscles, the article said, 
were exercised by our remote ancestors in 
climbing trees, and modern man may develop 
them by ascending hills. 

Seven hills were to be found without going to 
Rome. They were between the farmhouse and 
the railroad, a distance of three or four miles. 
I climbed two hills the first day. I was fagged 
out, but a truck farmer's wagon brought me 
home. I stuck to hill climbing and in a few 
weeks I could make the crest of all seven. 

Daily I seemed to acquire more strength. No 
doubt my heart became stronger and good air 



120 CURED 

permeated all the passages of the lungs, making 
my blood rich and pure. That was something 
worth while. But still I had that wretched 
nervousness which doomed me to be classed as 
an invalid. It grew worse whenever I went to 
the city. 

It was late in the summer when I read in the 
morning paper that a great cure for nervous 
troubles in vogue in certain parts of Texas con- 
sisted in donning a bathing suit and standing 
out in the rain. The pure, soft water, falling 
with gentle friction on the body, toned it up. 

I took my rain baths near a shallow creek. 
The exposure to the air did me good, and cer- 
tainly the rain did no harm. But I created a 
sensation among the neighbors. I received 
some threatening letters. The bathing suit was 
correct for the seashore but not for the country. 
I gave the baths up rather than have a row. 

About this time I ran across a book, "Power 
Through Repose, ,, by Anna Payson Call. Of 
course, I devoured the book. Boiled down, as 
some long stories are in newspaper offices, the 
message of repose to the ever alert seemed to 
be as follows : 

Relax ! Relax, early and often. When sit- 
ting in a chair, relax, be that chair at the den- 



CURED 121 

tist's, at the doctor's, or in the lecture room. 
Relax while riding on the train ; do not pull the 
cars, the board of directors have engines for 
that. Relax when riding in a vehicle, whether 
it be a taxicab, a brougham, landau, landaulet, 
phaeton, coach or even top buggy. Relax and 
let the horses do the pulling. Relax when rid- 
ing in trolleys, elevated, underground or sub- 
marine; when riding in rowboats, sailboats, 
sailing vessels, yachts, tugs, steamers, ocean 
liners or whaling vessels. 

Miss Call's message was received with most 
respectful attention. I thought over the past 
years of my nervous troubles and saw I had 
wasted enough energy to send the American 
fleet around the world again. Miss Call had 
thrown the spot-light on my energy account 
book and graphically pointed out my extrava- 
gance. 

The method of relaxation was simple enough. 
One must feel the feet growing heavy and then 
the legs take on weight. The heaviness at the 
extremities serves to loosen the tension. 

I started the relax method at dinner that day, 
and several persons asked me why I did not sit 
up straight. On retiring at night I prepared 
to dream Nebuchadnezzar's dream about the 



122 CURED 

man with leaden feet and legs. The relax 
method seemed to quiet my feet, but my head, 
arms and hands continued to "insurge." Next 
Sunday in church I relaxed by leaning against 
the seat while kneeling, to the scandal of my 
neighbors. 

One day a Presbyterian minister and his two 
beautiful daughters came to our boarding 
house. One of the girls particularly caught my 
fancy. She was a Maxine Elliott in appear- 
ance; and her smile — it was of the haunting, 
Mona Lisa brand. Miss Virginia was her 
name. She was a Southerner. She did not 
seem greatly interested in me but rather in an 
Airedale terrier pup I was trying to raise. 
When the hour for starting home came Miss 
Virginia's eyes plainly indicated that she 
wanted that dog, but would never ask for it. 
Her look of appeal was too much for me, and 
realizing that it would take a good deal of 
trouble to bring up the terrier, I begged her to 
accept it as a souvenir of her visit. 

She gave one musical, high note of delight, 
and then almost smothered the dog with ca- 
resses. 

The good Presbyterian divine must have 
been pleased with my Southern chivalry, for he 



CURED 123 



invited me to ride home with him. I accepted, 
knowing Miss Virginia would be one of my 
companions. Her sister sat on the front seat 
with the minister, and Miss Virginia and I and 
the dog took the other seat. We had a pleasant 
drive for the first mile or two. Suddenly Miss 
Virginia screamed in her soprano voice, "Stop 
kissing me !" I shall never forget the shrewd, 
sly look the minister shot around at both of us. 
Blushing a good deal, Miss Virginia explained 
that it was the Airedale to whom she had ad- 
dressed the remark. 

We were amused for a while by the incident, 
and then conversation began to lag ; Miss Vir- 
ginia paid more attention to the dog than to me. 
Suddenly I recalled I was riding in a carriage 
— my first carriage ride since reading the great 
Payson Call book. Ah, here was a capital 
chance to relax. So I began. My feet became 
heavy and then the calves of my legs. I sent 
the relax signal to the heart and stomach. 
Even the vertebrae caught it up and soon my 
muscles were like limp leather all over. The 
carriage swayed gently and I swayed with it, 
like a reed in the breeze. I felt myself gaining 
power through repose. It was growing dark. 
The minister must have been driving carelessly, 



124 CURED 



for suddenly the wheel passed over a stump of 
a tree, which lifted the carriage box a foot or 
more. Completely relaxed as I was I found 
myself hurled — right into Miss Virginia's lap! 
There was a staccato scream ! As I struggled 
to regain my place there was enough light to 
see her big, black eyes flash with anger. I tried 
to apologize, but Miss Virginia said nothing. 

After a little time I was given a chance to 
explain and told her that when the carriage 
wheel had struck the stump I was riding "re- 
laxed," a la Payson Call, to soothe my nervous 
system. Miss Virginia did not seem appeased 
by the explanation. She remained taciturn un- 
til we reached her home. As I helped her from 
the carriage she said, arching her beautiful 
brows: "If I ride with you again, I must ask 
you to be a little more rigid!" 

After my experience with Miss Virginia, the 
"power through repose cure" seemed to lose its 
efficacy. Nearly every time I "relaxed," I 
thought of a pair of flaming eyes. I lost the 
power of concentration, so necessary in the 
"Call" cure. 

I told my experience to the parish priest, who 
had lent me the book. He said he had never be- 
fore heard of such a catastrophe ; and advised 






CURED 125 

me not to take the cure in public. He suggested 
that I call on a cardinal, who, he said, had suf- 
fered with dyspepsia. I lost no time before vis- 
iting the prelate. 

The cardinal listened attentively to the ac- 
count of my long journey in search of a cure 
for nervous dyspepsia, and when I told him I 
had tried scores of great physicians, he inter- 
rupted me, "Dyspepsia? — I know something 
about it. I have had it for-r-t-y years. Now 
let me tell you what to do. First of all, keep 
away from all doctors ! That is very impor- 
tant. Be careful not to overload the stomach; 
avoid 'fad foods' and eat what you like, taking 
chicken in preference to beef; chicken is more 
easily digested. Walk an hour or two each day 
in the fresh air. Do not read at night, nor on 
the street cars, nor on the trains. Try to be 
cheerful. But the main thing is to keep away 
from all doctors." He then wished me well and 
excused himself as there were many callers 
waiting. 

I returned home with the conviction I had 
received good advice, but, alas, I did not get 
better. Diet did not cure me, nor did walking. 
I tried to be cheerful, but I did not get rid of 
that all-gone feeling, that restlessness and indi- 



126 CURED 



gestion. I could not sit in church twenty min- 
utes, nor even ten. I was too restless to go into 
what is called "society." What should I do? 
Certainly not consult any more doctors, but I 
still had that book, the "Key to Health." In it, 
perhaps, I could discover some cure for nerv- 
ousness that I had not tried. 

I checked off a number of cures that I had 
taken and finally found a new one. It was the 
"Kneipp Dew Baths for the Feet." There was 
a good deal of literature on these dew baths. 
The "Key to Health" said that the human foot 
plays an important part in nervous disorders; 
the foot is to the human body what the tripod is 
to the camera. It then explained that the foot 
is an elastic arch composed anatomically of 
three divisions: the tarsus, the metatarsus 
and the phalanges, or, in plain English, the toes. 
Further, it was stated that the elasticity of the 
arch prevents jarring of the human frame dur- 
ing movement, and is particularly conducive to 
lessen concussion to the brain and spinal cord. 
In other words, cut off the elasticity and you 
get the jar. With the jar you get nerves. That 
was why nervous people use rubber heels to 
break the jar or absorb the shock, just as rub- 
ber tires are used on bicycles and carriage 



CURED 127 

wheels. Since the foot has many times the pore 
population of other parts of the body, square 
inch for square inch of epidermis, these dew 
baths would do wonders if applied to the foot 
in toning up the entire system. These baths 
were also recommended for headache, neural- 
gia, colds, toothache, catarrh, congestion of ab- 
dominal and pelvic organs, and cold feet. In a 
short time I was a dew-bath enthusiast. 

They brought results. I felt that the liga- 
ments of the feet were strengthened and the 
bearings of the spinal tripod were "oiled" by 
these peculiar baths. 

Early one morning, while the moon was still 
shining, I threw a light colored bathrobe over 
my pajamas and ventured out as usual on the 
lawn where I took my dew bath. I held up my 
robe-de-chambre and proceeded around the 
lawn. I had toured the lawn four or five times 
and was just thinking of turning in again when 
I heard a shriek. It was a woman's voice. I 
could not see anyone, but I remembered there 
was a nervous lady, a Miss Duncan, sleeping in 
the front room of the second story. It was im- 
possible in my attire to rush into the house to 
find out what had happened. So I determined 
to retreat to my room. 



128 CURED 

At breakfast Miss Duncan was reported ill. 
One of her friends said that she had had a nerv- 
ous spell early in the morning, and had risen to 
get some medicine to quiet her nerves, when she 
saw a ghost out on the lawn — the figure of a 
woman holding up her dress as she picked roses. 
The vision caused her to shriek and then faint 
from fright. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Washington High Life — Salubrious Georgia 
Pines — Change of Scenery — Olive Oil Inunc- 
tions — Cannon Balls, and Wooden Balls. 

BY the first of October, life in the country 
had lost its charms. I yearned for the 
city, so I moved into town and stopped at 
a boarding house not many blocks from the in- 
firmary. I called on one of the nurses, a Miss 
Bonney. We had quite a pleasant chat. She 
declared that I had greatly improved, but said 
she noticed that I still tore my hair and con- 
tinued to fan myself even in cold weather. Miss 
Bonney said she was taking the "Society Cure," 
which consisted in going to balls, theatres, din- 
ners, games and plunging into a vortex of 
gayety. This was a course of treatment pre- 
scribed by the head nurse for nurses run down 
from overwork. 

When I returned to my room I thought over 
the "Society Cure." 'Why not try it? I had 
shunned society for years and now, perhaps, 
mingling with people would make me forget 

9 (129) 



130 CURED 

myself. I met Dr. Jenkins on the street and he 
asked me how I felt. I told him, pretty well. 
(I had to give some excuse for not calling on 
him.) He said whatever nervousness I still 
had could be attributed to my "psychic" condi- 
tion; I had hypnotized myself into the belief 
that I was nervous. He assured me it had be- 
come largely a habit in my case and one I must 
break. 

After leaving Dr. Jenkins I went to the rail- 
road station to while away an hour or two 
watching the people coming and going. I al- 
ways found that occupation amusing. At the 
depot I spied a Washington Sunday paper and 
bought a copy. I was greatly surprised to read 
an article signed by a former newspaper chum 
of mine, who had risen to be the Sunday editor. 
Then and there I mapped out a brilliant cam- 
paign. Why not try the Washington High Life 
Cure? I wrote to my friend, Jim Morley, and 
soon received a telegram in reply (Morley 
never wrote letters), which said: "Come, we 
can give you work." 

I arrived in Washington and found Jim 
comfortably located on the fourth floor of the 
handsome half-million-dollar Y. M. C. A. 
building. Jim was heartily in sympathy with 



CURED 131 

my idea to meet people once more. He spoke 
so many good words in my favor to the m. e. 
(managing editor) that next day I was given 
a good position. 

Didn't I lead a gay life? All I had to do was 
to hang around the New Willard, Raleigh, 
Shoreham and Victoria hotels sending up my 
card to people whose names suggested a story. 
I met some very charming people. One of my 
interviews was thrown all over the front page 
of our evening paper and it made quite a 
sensation among the editors and my co-work- 
ers. No wonder it made a sensation, for it was 
all the work of that peerless newspaperman 
and author, Mark Twain, who had granted the 
interview on condition that he himself be al- 
lowed to write it. Poor Mark Twain is no 
more, but his kindness to the scribes is still re- 
membered by many, including myself. 

For a month I stood the work pretty well. 
The effort to compose at great speed on a type- 
writer was a strain and the blood rushed to my 
head, but I stuck to my cure. When Congress 
met, the social and political life grew even more 
brilliant. I had no time to take my noonday 
meal and at night there were so many banquets 
to attend that I was robbed of my sleep. By; 



132 CURED 



Christmas my restlessness had increased. Jim 
Morley and several of his friends begged me to 
sleep more and work less, to take life easier, but 
I did not seem to be able to put on the brakes. 
My life had become a kind of hysteria. 

The straw that broke the earners back was 
an incident that occurred on Dupont Circle, 
where the creme de la creme of Washington 
High Society is found. I had to call on a noted 
social leader for an important story about Red 
Cross work. I had difficulty in finding the 
house as I did not know the number. I knew 
the lady's name, and spying a light in a tailor's 
shop, I walked in and telephoned, asking her 
where she lived. She seemed greatly amused 
and gave me the number of her house. I was 
soon at the door. An English butler showed me 
into the parlor. The lady was very charming 
and entertaining, but I felt so restless that I 
could not sit still ten seconds at a time. I must 
have made her think I was possessed by the way 
I shuffled around on a gilded chair. 

Polite as was the lady, she could not conceal 
her amazement at my behavior. This made me 
worse. In my desperation I asked her about 
some photographs which I saw lying on a sofa 
next to her. They proved to be photos of Red 



CURED 133 



Cross nurses in Japan. She discussed them and 
I drew my chair nearer to her in order to ex- 
amine the pictures. I began to wish I had not 
mentioned them for my restlessness became un- 
bearable. Before I realized what I was doing 
I had jumped up in the chair and kicked the 
lady right on the shin. Horror-stricken, I 
stammered an apology, and tearing my hair 
made a dash for the door. The lady rose to her 
feet. Perhaps I was fascinated by her manner. 

"Could you tell me where the door is?" I 
stammered. 

"The butler v/ill show you," she replied in 
icy tones, as she touched a bell. Once out of 
that mansion I ran for two entire blocks to re- 
lieve my feelings. 

I must get out of Washington in double- 
quick time ! What right had I, nervous wreck 
that I was, to go around with the Dupont Circle 
Set, kicking them on their shins? 

Morley was plainly perturbed at the incident ; 
"She is worth ten millions," he remarked, look- 
ing very grave. 

I told him I was going to clear out and throw 
up my job. Then he tried to calm me, but I 
refused to be calmed. He suggested the Y. M. 



134 CURED 

C. A. shower baths or needle baths,, but I would 
have none of them. 

One of the Sunday writers asked me why I 
did not go to the South Georgia pine country, 
where he had formerly lived. He said the salu- 
brious pines were great for the nerves. Before 
a week had passed I had obtained transporta- 
tion (for those were the days of passes) and 
was on my way to a little town in South 
Georgia. I had a letter to the m. e. of the only 
daily paper there. He was a little brown- 
skinned, long-haired, pipe-smoking cuss. He 
asked me repeatedly, "What can you do?" He 
needed a man to write local news and help him 
get out the paper. I told him I would take the 
job, and I managed to get along pretty well. 
Although I was expected to work fifteen hours 
out of the twenty-four, the work was not of the 
Washington nerve-racking kind. 

There were many pine trees in the little town 
and the air from them may have been salubri- 
ous and nerve-soothing in summer. I was not 
sure that I could notice anything salubrious 
about the air in winter, so I stayed, month after 
month, waiting for summer to come. It came 
quite suddenly, the mercury shooting up to the 
ninety column. Soon it was 100 in the shade 



CURED 135 



and I found the heat intolerable. I became 
weak. I could bear that heat no longer, even if 
I occasionally got a whirl of turpentine with it. 

One of my friends in the Georgia town, with 
whom I discussed climate, was an eye, ear, nose 
and throat specialist. His name was Dr. Sher- 
lock Swan Cheatham. I spent many evenings 
at his house. 

Cheatham told me that when he arrived in 
Georgia he discovered some of the doctors fool- 
ing their patients about their eyesight, making 
them buy expensive new glasses whether they 
needed them or not. "The doctor would note the 
strength of the patient's glasses/' said Cheat- 
ham, "and adjust a new pair of the same 
strength. The patient would say, 'I can see 
very well out of these/ The doctor would re- 
ply, 'How do they compare with the old 
glasses V But before returning the old ones he 
would touch the lenses with a drop of oil. Nat- 
urally they became blurred and the patient 
would exclaim, 'Oh, these are not so good as the 
new lenses/ A sale of a pair of gold-rimmed, 
seven-dollar spectacles invariably followed and, 
as the doctors dealt in these things, they made 
lots of money." Cheatham continued, "I did 
my best to break up this fraudulent practice and 



136 CURED 



my efforts as a reformer naturally made many 
enemies in the medical fraternity." 

I realized that Dr. Sherlock Swan Cheatham 
was a very bright man, and I was convinced he 
was a very conscientious one. 

Cheatham suggested that the strain of news- 
paper work and the severely depressing heat 
were too hard on my nerves, and recommended 
me to apply for some traveling position. He 
said he had once traveled for a surgical supply 
house. "The change of food and scene are 
splendid," said Cheatham, "and you would soon 
become accustomed to sleep on the Pullmans." 

Anything to escape that awful summer heat ! 
I wrote to different firms seeking a position as 
traveling salesman and finally landed a job 
which was to take me from Boston to New Or- 
leans and as far west as Ohio. Early the next 
morning I went over to tell Cheatham good- 
bye. Then I heard the awful news. He had 
been hunting and had been brought home bleed- 
ing from a shot wound in his left foot, and 
moaning with pain. A doctor was summoned, 
and seeing Cheatham in agony pulled out a hy- 
podermic and morphine. Cheatham protested, 
but the doctor replied: "It is the duty of a 
physician to relieve pain," and jabbed the 



CURED 137 

needle into his arm. Death resulted promptly. 

A lawsuit followed this tragic death. I 
heard the details some time later from a friend. 
"A few weeks before the disaster/' said my 
friend, "Cheatham had insured his lower limbs 
against all accidents for $25,000. On his death 
the widow claimed the insurance, but the com- 
pany refused to pay pending an investigation. 
The body was exhumed and an examination re- 
vealed a large quantity of cocaine in the in- 
jured foot. The company maintained that Dr. 
Sherlock Swan Cheatham had cocainized his 
left foot and then shot it off on purpose. No, 
they did not pay accident insurance for lower 
limbs' in such cases! Dr. Cheatham's little 
plan might have been a success had a colleague 
not acted on the principle that the duty of a doc- 
tor is to relieve pain and injected morphia. Fol- 
lowing cocaine, morphia is a fatal poison." 

Poor Cheatham, I liked him so much. He 
was a very bright man, but shallow ! 

"To travel is to possess the world," says Bur- 
ton Holmes, and he ought to know. "To travel 
is to regain health," say the neurasthenics. And 
what in the world is so precious as health and 
so hard to regain when lost ? 

Such were my thoughts as I was whirled 



138 CURED 



northward. After a couple of days I was in 
Pennsylvania. Already the travel cure was 
bearing fruit. I was feeling better. I straight- 
ened up as I took deep breaths of the exhila- 
rating air. 

Unfortunately, I had to travel right back 
through the South. The heat of the trains was 
very trying on me. The plush-cushioned seats 
were anything but cool. The Pullman cars 
were stuffy. At night, when they were turned 
into sleepers, the cries of the numerous babies 
aboard reminded one of the lambing season in 
the Southwest. How could one sleep in those 
Pullmans ? 

There were advantages in traveling, how- 
ever. It was a thrill to visit so many different 
hotels and restaurants and sample strange 
foods. I always carried my stomach tube in my 
grip in case of trouble in the epigastric region 
from some indigestible article. 

Traveling gave me a capital chance of swap- 
ping cure suggestions with people. I was con- 
vinced that a large percentage of the people I 
saw on the trains were traveling to watering 
places in search of a cure. 

It was not difficult for me, an interviewer by 
profession, to interview these health seekers. I 



CURED 139 



made it my habit, on boarding a train, to walk 
through every coach and study the faces of my 
fellow travelers. I felt sure I could distinguish 
which men had been guzzling water at mineral 
springs and which had taken baths at sanitaria. 
If I saw a very fat man, I put him down as a 
milk specialist; if of great girth, a Neptune 
girdle or "Umschlag" wearer; if lean, lazy and 
washed-out looking, a "midnight choo-choo to 
Alabam' " devotee ; if yellow, a sulphur water 
toper ; if he possessed bloodshot eyes and a red 
blossom on his nose, then he was a beginner of 
the California wine or Peruna cures. If he 
had an Irish potato lip or a Basque onion chin, 
perhaps he had taken a reserved seat at one of 
those vegetarian restaurants? If cancerous in 
appearance, he was doubtless a Salisbury meat 
dietist. 

Finally, I met a man who gave me a sugges- 
tion for a new cure. He was a merchant who 
kept a "racket store" in one of the Southern 
cities. We talked of cures for half an hour, and 
he said he believed the best physicians are to be 
found in the country. Then he told me how his 
son had been cured of typhoid fever by an old 
country doctor. The boy was about to die, 
when the doctor recommended that the entire 



140 CURED 



body be rubbed with olive oil. There was no 
olive oil in the house, so the doctor took plain 
bacon and smeared the boy's body with it. The 
"racket store" man assured me that the fever 
at once subsided and the boy recovered. He 
said that olive oil inunctions were strongly rec- 
ommended for nervous disorders and might do 
me a "whole lot of good." 

I had taken the travel cure for several weeks 
and I felt better. But I was still restless and 
the symptoms were too marked for me to be- 
lieve that I could go to a theatre or church and 
remain quiet in a seat for ten minutes. This 
"racket store" man had probably told the truth, 
and if oil or grease would pull his boy from the 
jaws of death, perhaps it would fortify me 
against the attacks of "nerves." Certainly 
there was no harm in trying it. 

Before immersing myself in oil, I decided to 
read up the subject and see what the medical 
profession had to say about it. The first med- 
ical work I took hold of stated that oil inunc- 
tions were of great antiquity, having been prac- 
ticed by the Romans and Turks. They con- 
sisted in rubbing the skin with some kind of a 
lubricant, olive oil being preferred by the Ro- 
mans. But it was stated that pure olive oil was 



CURED 141 



almost impossible to obtain in this country. 
Pure vaseline, warmed, would make an excel- 
lent substitute, although refined cocoanut oil 
was preferable. The medical work substanti- 
ated the claims made by the Tennessee "racket 
store" man that oil baths reduce the tempera- 
ture and the pulse in cases of fever. A report 
of Dr. Taylor, of London, published in 1850, 
was cited. Dr. Taylor had found that "the oil 
bath especially soothes the nervous system, pro- 
duces sleep, lessens the frequency of the pulse 
and correspondingly of the thirst." 

I began the baths on Sunday night. Follow- 
ing the medical books I took a warm bath, 
rubbed down, dried myself and then applied the 
cocoanut butter. My body glistened like that 
of a pugilist. 

When I arose the next morning I wondered 
why I had perspired so much ; I left an impres- 
sion of a full suit of pajamas on the fine linen 
sheets. The outline had balance, rhythm and 
harmony, and the unity of effect was very no- 
ticeable on the sheets. 

I took a good, elaborate oil inunction every 
night, and I felt sure the treatment would do 
me a world of good, making me sleep sounder, 
eat better and finally dispel that irritation. I 



142 CURED 



certainly did sleep well for the first week. Then 
a disagreeable thing occurred. I received a 
note from the landlady, stating that I had 
ruined a dozen sheets and it was impossible to 
wash out the oil. Would I kindly pay two dol- 
lars a pair? 

The idea of spending two dollars a day just 
for sheets was preposterous! Moreover, my 
pajamas had cost six dollars a suit! And all 
they were now fit for was lubricating cloths. I 
decided to let the oil inunction alone in the 
future. 

On the train to Pittsburgh I met an electrical 
engineer. As usual, I brought up the subject of 
dyspepsia and found that he had had it. He 
declared that he was cured by using a cannon 
ball. 

"A cannon ball?" I asked in surprise, won- 
dering if I had misunderstood him. 

"Yes," he said, "a real, steel, cannon ball, 
covered with leather. It is a great stunt in the 
sanitariums. It aids assimilation and puts new 
life into the stomach tissues." 

I procured one of the projectiles for $1.75 
and started it to work. At first I felt like a 
tenderfoot coming in too close relationship with 
the pommel of a cowboy's saddle while riding 



CURED 143 



a rough trotter, but gradually I became used to 
the ball. While hoping for a cure I discussed 
the novel remedy with my friends. Meeting a 
bishop who had just returned from Wiesbaden, 
where he had taken the hot water "kur" for his 
dyspepsia, I told him of the cannon-ball scheme 
to help rejuvenate the tissues. 

"A cannon ball!" exclaimed the bishop. "I 
should think that would cause dilatation of the 
stomach. I never heard of such a treatment/' 
I explained that the cannon ball was for ex- 
ternal, not internal use. 

Alas, the cannon ball did not rub out my dys- 
peptic troubles. Then a Cincinnati millionaire 
came along and suggested a cure that had made 
him a new man. 

Instead of a steel projectile his was an appa- 
ratus consisting of twenty little wooden balls, 
which served to massage the entire body. I 
tried the machine, but could never make much 
headway as the skin on my back always got 
tangled up in the thumpers. A look in the mir- 
ror told me that my assimilation was below par. 



CHAPTER IX 

Bicycle Riding — Perfect Poise — Martial 
Music, and Scientific Breathing. 

AFTER traveling for over three months I 
had all the scenery, change of food and 
air I required. I was still uncured. 

I had a newspaper friend who was editing ai 
afternoon paper in a "college town" in northern 
New York. I decided to go to that town and 
study the ways of the 'varsity's great athletes, 
who had won international fame. 

My newspaper friend gladly gave me a posi- 
tion as interviewer on his paper, and also as- 
signed me the post of music critic. There were 
two conservatories in the town and many 
musical affairs at the 'varsity. 

In Washington, Jim Morley had made me do 
some "musical criticism." When I rebelled, 
saying I knew nothing about music, he replied : 
"None of the critics here do ; go right ahead and 
we will print your stuff. You can do it splen- 
didly." I managed the musical criticism in the 
college town as I had in the capital by talking to 

(144) 



CURED 145 



the musicians and getting them to give me point- 
ers as to how they ought to have played their 
pieces, or sung their songs. I asked one singer 
what was the highest praise he would like to see 
in print. "That I have a good voice which I 
know how to use," was his prompt reply. He 
saw it in print the next day, although he had 
certainly sung very poorly the night before. He 
was nervous and had a clutching at the throat. 
I collected a number of press clippings of art- 
ists (vocalists, pianists, violinists, violoncel- 
lists, harpists, etc.), and from the brilliant 
work of other people in my business I prepared 
a symposium of expressions which I held as a 
stock in trade, to be used when needed. I got 
along swimmingly though I could not distin- 
guish a real fugue from an imitation, and my 
knowledge of "counterpoint" was nil. As the 
m. e. knew just as little about music as I (and 
often less, for I had a musical dictionary to con- 
sult), the artists' enemies and disgusted audi- 
ences alone complained of my extravagances in 
the musical column, and I held down "the job" 
satisfactorily. 

Besides my musical work I conversed with 
the college athletes, and also with the physical 
directors. I interviewed great men who visited 



146 CURED 

the 'varsity to lecture or deliver orations. One 
athlete told me he had had a weak stomach and 
had strengthened the abdominal portion of his 
anatomy to a marvelous degree by bicycle rid- 
ing. He looked pretty healthy, and I thought 
he ought to know what the cure would do. I 
bought a ball-bearing wheel and began prac- 
ticing. I noted that it developed the legs and 
made the muscles around the stomach very 
rigid, more rigid than the 'Tower Through Re- 
pose" book might have approved. I continued 
riding for weeks and found I developed lung 
capacity. I could wheel for miles at great 
speed. One day something went wrong with a 
tire and I had to have the machine overhauled. 
I found to my amazement that I could hardly 
walk a block. I had become entirely dependent 
on the wheel. As soon as my bicycle was 
mended I returned to the treatment. 

But the wheel cure was not curing my nerv- 
ousness. I was so restless I could not sit 
through a concert or a lecture. I felt oppressed, 
overheated, and I had an intense desire to be 
outdoors. It was a martyrdom to sit in a room. 

One evening I had to go to a lecture at the 
'varsity. (I always managed to be near the 
door at these lectures, and step out when the 



CURED 147 

nervous storm became too severe.) I started to 
wheel to the hall right after a rain. In going 
down a hill at a good clip my wheel began to 
skid. I saw a granite arch coming toward me ; 
my brake would not work, and the next instant 
I had crashed into the arch. My right shoulder 
received the force of the blow and was severely 
wrenched. My forehead struck the arch and a 
deep gash was the result. I bled profusely and 
was carried to the house of a surgeon, who 
sewed up my wound with seven stitches. I was 
sent home in a carriage and a trained nurse was 
summoned. 

That experience cured me of the cycling 
mania. And the bicycle — it was smashed all to 
pieces. The Varsity architect later informed 
me that the arch into which I had taken the 
headlong plunge was made of the hardest gran- 
ite obtainable in Vermont. I did not doubt it. 

Although cycling had evidently given me a 
good deal of strength, I was unable to conquer 
my nervousness and was afraid to enter so- 
ciety. 

One day I met a Russian professor, who 
took me in hand. He was a great, big, strap- 
ping fellow, with an immense name, which 
sounded like "Imanhoff Tear-a-carpet-off." I 



148 CURED 

shall call him Professor Imanhoff. He taught 
several branches of knowledge to the students, 
who thought him splendid, and he tried to teach 
me the Art of Poise. Professor Imanhoff was 
a socialist and an ex-Christian Scientist. He 
could play the piano like Paderewski, and rival 
Dr. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, in his ability to 
abstain from eating meat. A Christian Scien- 
tist told me he was a cardinal of cranks, yet I 
liked him very much. One day I had to call on 
the professor for a story. Seeing me walk 
around the room nervously, he exclaimed, 
"Why, you act as though you had stage fright." 
He questioned me about my diet; I told him 
I was tired of experimenting with foods. We 
talked over some of my cures. 

Imanhoff lent me his book on "Poise," which 
he wished me to read with great care. I still 
have the book. Professor Imanhoff's master- 
piece differed from the work on "Power 
Through Repose." I shall quote an extract 
which attracted me in particular: 

"When the mind lives, thinks and acts in that 
state where nothing from without can disturb, 
the inner foundation of real poise has been 
secured; nothing can produce restlessness in 
the body or agitation in the mind any more, and 



CURED 149 



you can pass through every form of experience 
without departing for a moment from that 
deep, positive state of soul serenity where 
'none of these things move me/ " 

What a splendid sentence! I would send it 
to the New York Sun's "bright column" with 
"please copy" marked on it. The state de- 
scribed was a heavenly one. With real poise 
a person could calmly survey the train he has 
just missed, or when one's best girl, to court 
w T hom has cost a fortune, gives a final "No," 
that deep soul serenity would assert itself and 
one would take a deep breath of real poise and 
say "None of these jilts move me." 

Me for the Poise! I should wade right in, 
knee deep into the desired state. But the more 
I studied the remarkable book the less I under- 
stood it. "Supreme poise is only possible to one 
who knows," says Elbert Hubbard. Cer- 
tainly it did not seem possible to me, for I did 
not know. I could not grasp it. Perhaps Pro- 
fessor ImanhofFs mind could tussle with that 
poise theory of soul serenity and get himself 
into a state where nothing bothered him. And 
yet, how could a man with such philosophy as 
Professor ImanhofFs play the piano with so 
much temperament? I was puzzled. 



150 CURED 

One day I met a very charming young lady 
from New York. She was a blonde; her 
speaking, gray eyes attracted me, and she 
seemed the possessor of poise. I wished to hear 
her views on the subject. Standing up or, 
rather, walking around restlessly, I asked her 
if she had known many men, the possessors of 
great calm, men who can sit perfectly still by 
the hour, men who can rival the automaton who 
sat in a Providence (R. I.) drug store window 
impersonating a wax figure and advertising a 
cigarette. 

"Yes," she replied, fiercely; "I have seen 
such men, and when I meet them I would like 
to go over and choke them." 

What a revelation ! Was this the way a cul- 
tured New York girl felt on that almost sacred, 
heavenly attitude of poise? Later we took a 
walk and I had a further talk on Poise. She 
advised me to throw the Poise Book into the 
fire, and said, "Throw with it the ideas of your 
pallid vegetarian friend. Tell Mr. Imanhoff 
to eat a few mutton chops, done rare, and get 
some color into his cheeks. Tell him the Amer- 
ican ideal man of to-day is one of restless ac- 
tivity, the Roosevelt type. Such men are the 



CURED 151 



men worth while, not those of the lectual, 
lethargic look!" 

This New York girl suggested music to 
soothe my nerves and gave me this pianola ad- 
vertisement, clipped from a magazine : 



"There Is Nothing so Stimu- 
lating 

to the jaded nerves as the weird 
strains of impassioned martial music. 
"The crash of the attack — the des- 
perate resistance — the clattering, 
clanking rush of cavalry — the re- 
sounding deep-throated song of the 
artillery — the sharp staccato rattle of 
the musketry — the clash of steel on 
steel — the mad melodious cheer of 
victory/' etc. 

Music was to be the new cure. But where 
was I to hear the weird strains of impassioned 
martial music? Certainly not at those con- 
servatory recitals or other musical affairs which 
I attended as critic. I read with great interest 
an interview in the New York Herald, with 
Professor R. W. Gebhardt, a director of a con- 



152 CURED 



servatory and a violin virtuoso. In the inter- 
view the professor said: 

"I find that musical sounds postpone weari- 
ness. If you should play a high note, or yell 
at the moment an athlete leaves the ground in 
jumping, he would go higher than he otherwise 
would have done. One of the popular illustra- 
tions of the effect of music is afforded by danc- 
ing. No man or woman could dance all night 
and into the morning without the stimulus of 
music. ,, 

Musical sounds postpone weariness. That 
was an idea! I should investigate the music 
cure suggested by the New Yorker, encouraged 
by the advertisement to sell pianolas and en- 
dorsed by Herr Gebhardt. 

Nothing was said about "ragging" or about 
"syncopated" music, but, for all that, I decided 
to learn more of music's reputed therapeutic 
value in the treatment of nervous diseases. 

I looked up the subject in medical works, and 
was much astonished to read in one the follow- 
ing statements : 

"The therapeutic value of music has long 
been known. For ages warriors have been 
led to battle to the sounds of martial strains. 
David charmed away Saul's evil spirit with his 



CURED 153 



harp. Horace, in his Thirty-second Ode, Book 
I, concludes his address to the lyre : 
'O, of our troubles, the sweet, 
The healing sedative, etc/ " 

Further on I read: 

"There is little doubt of the therapeutic value 
of music, but particularly do we find its value 
in instances of neuroses. . . . Music is cer- 
tainly a good antidote to the pernicious habit 
of introspection and self-analysis, which is 
often a curse, both of the hysteric and of the 
highly cultured. It would seem obviously pref- 
erable to have recourse to music of a lively and 
cheerful character." 

So wrote the learned medicos — "of a lively 
and cheerful character." That was just what 
the dashing pianola ad writer meant when he 
launched a boom for "martial music/' I de- 
cided to test the ability of music to soothe my 
nerves and enable me to sit still. 

I consulted a pianist at the conservatory. He 
was a Norwegian; Hagen by name. I had 
given him some good press notices especially 
useful to him after one performance at which 
he had been much rattled and had failed to play 
with his usual skill. I told him about the music 
cure for nerves. I read him the advertisement 



154 CURED 



about martial music and rattle of musketry. 
Then I told him I did not wish to invest in pian- 
olas to get the music. "No, they are horrible 
things/' interrupted Hagen. "I wish to play 
the piano myself," I declared. "But, my dear 
fellow," protested Hagen, "it will take years 
and years to learn to play martial music on the 
piano and get that 'crash of attack' you so de- 
sire. You ought to have begun studying at the 
age of six!" 

Yes, that was an objection. Mr. Hagen 
counseled me to learn to listen to music, and 
said that the object of all music is to "conjure 
up pleasant thoughts." I told him I had lis- 
tened to a great deal of music in that town, and 
that I could not conjure up thoughts of rare 
beauty when I heard conservatory pupils try- 
ing to sing "Lehn deine Wange an Meine 
Wange" and "O Promise Me." 

A little disappointed, I next tried the harp- 
ists, who play an instrument dear to a son of 
Erin. The harp was the instrument on which 
David played to soothe Saul, was it not? It 
might soothe me. I consulted the harpist at the 
conservatory, but he gave me no encourage- 
ment to learn it, assuring me that it would take 
ten years "to play a little." 



CURED 155 



Next I tried a violoncellist, a sturdy Ger- 
man. He said the tone of his instrument came 
closest to the human voice. But when I told him 
I wished to learn the 'cello he said, "Ach vas ! it 
vould take many monts of sewere practice to 
make vun tone vot vill not drive avay evry 
r-r-rat out the vail." Moreover, he was afraid 
the wear and tear on my finger tips would be 
bad for my nerves. The violinists said the 
same. Evidently I was not encouraged by the 
artists to become a producer of martial music. 
The mandolin was out of the question; "too 
much foam and clatter-a-datch," said my 
friend Hagen. Other musicians denounced the 
guitar as a producer of "catarrhal" tones. 

Then I hit upon the instrument — the German 
zither. It had bass and treble; it was a com- 
plete instrument and portable. Of course, it 
was a formidable instrument, with its thirty- 
two strings. But its tone, especially the trem- 
olo, appealed to my ears. I read that Patti 
played it, and so did the Dowager Queen Mar- 
garita, of Italy, and the unhappy Empress 
Elizabeth, of Austria. After hearing the 
world-famed zither virtuosa, Madam Kitty 
Berger, I heartily agreed with the ecstatic 
praise of Anthony Trollope: 



156 



CURED 



"It (the zither) unites the full sweetness of 
the sounds of the human voice ; it sings for you 
of the bliss and sorrow of love until your heart 
is filled with woe, from which one has neither 
the power nor the inclination to withdraw; it 
speaks to you as no other instrument can speak, 
and reveals to you with wonderful versatility 
the grief into which it enters with rapture; it 
creates an abundance of desires; it feasts us 
with the satisfaction of an imaginary woe; it 
reveals the secret charms of romance, to de- 
scribe which words are powerless. While life 
is flowing from its strings, and while its sounds 
fill the air, the ear eagerly imbibes every atom 
of its voice and perceives every other sound and 
tone a profane interruption." 

I sought and found a good deal of literature 
relating to the zither. The zither was the par- 
ent of all stringed instruments. Was it not the 
Roman "lyre," the Persian, Hindostan and 
Asiatic "sitar" and the Nubian "kissar?" And 
did not Shakespeare, who understood dyspepsia 
so well, refer to the zither in his play, "Love's 
Labor Lost ?" At all events, the union of sus- 
tained melody, combined with its ability to pro- 
duce light and shade, was very captivating. 

I bought a harp-zither and began the new 



CURED 157 



cure. It was a great task to learn to tune all 
those strings ; and the thin, steel strings for 
the left hand cut into my finger tips. But my 
teacher — a German tailor — encouraged me to 
put resin on the finger tips and thus brave the 
conflict. He said another good way to make 
the finger tips hard was to dip them in pure 
alcohol and light them. When the alcohol 
burned off, the skin remained very tough. 

Finally, I was put on my first piece, at which 
I remained a long time. It was called "Ich 
kenn' ein Auge!" I am sure no oculist gave 
more attention to eyes than I did whilst learn- 
ing that simple melody. Several people in the 
house where I lived complained about the 
"music/' and said it was worse than a tooth- 
ache. Mr. Trollope had well said that the zither 
creates an abundance of desires. My desires 
took the form of wishing to learn pieces, and 
those of my neighbors to escape them, especially 
"Ich kenn' ein Auge." Finally, I did break 
away from that song, and I learned the "Lor- 
elei" and "Herz, mein Herz, warum so trau- 
rig?" That last was a masterpiece. My heart 
became indeed sad at the difficulties that con- 
fronted me; but I dearly loved this music, 
though I had the greatest difficulty to keep the 



158 CURED 

instrument in tune. I found it also difficult to 
keep time. 

The zither seemed to have a soothing effect, 
giving me something to think about apart from 
my indigestion. After months of practice I 
tackled martial music, the kind advertised as 
good for jaded nerves. The piece selected was, 
"Vater, ich rufe dich," a war hymn from the 
Fatherland. I thought I had learned to play 
this battle hymn pretty well, so well that, "upon 
request," I played it for an old German music 
lover. He listened attentively, and then said, 
"You have a fine little instrument there, my 
boy, but you can't render martial music on a 
zither. Ach, you need the thunder of an organ, 
bass drums and cymbals in order to play a Ger- 
man war hymn." 

Yes, the crash of the attack, the desperate re- 
sistance, the clattering, clanking rush of cav- 
alry, the deep-throated song of the artillery — 
that was not for the zither. So I went to a 
Russian concert to hear the stimulating brand 
of music; it fired me to a high pitch of enthu- 
siasm. I felt worse after it. I tried the con- 
certs of the "Music Festival" with the same re- 
sult. I decided finally that good music was all 
right to conjure up pleasant thoughts, but that 



CURED 159 

it did not have the tonic value attributed it by 
Professor Gebhardt. Music was a palliative, 
not a cure! 

My love of music, however, did one thing — 
it introduced me to Madame Grimaldi. 

It was Madame Grimaldi who conducted the 
fifty-seventh cure. I met her through the pas- 
tor of a church where madame had sung. He 
and I attended a function at a small college 
some miles from town. We had to spend the 
night at the college and shared the same room. 
He noticed that I kicked about in bed and could 
not go to sleep. The next morning he said to 
me: "Ah, you have a nervous trouble and 
should do something for it. I think the great 
thing is to learn to breathe properly. You are 
not getting the most important thing in life — 
air. One can live without food for days, but 
not without air. Remember that." He then 
wrote the name of "Madame Grimaldi" on a 
card and said she taught people not only to 
sing, but to speak; and best of all, she taught 
them to breathe! 

Well, perhaps there was something in that 
idea! I would try it. My love of music was 
strong, and Madame Grimaldi might not only 
cure my nervous trouble, but even make a 



160 CURED 



singer out of me. I had often read that there 
were many Carusos undiscovered for lack of a 
proper person to try the voice. I called on 
Madame. She was a plump little woman, with 
dark eyes and black hair. She talked English 
fairly well. Her lessons to me were three dol- 
lars an hour, but I could take them in homeo- 
pathic doses at one dollar for twenty minutes. 
That scheme suited me. From my first inter- 
view with Madame, I ascertained the follow- 
ing: 

"Voice production is governed by natural 
and acoustic laws. Voice culture should come 
from a physiological and hygienic standpoint. 
Each individual voice has its own combinations 
and adjustments. Proper breathing'' (that hit 
me) "and proper voice production should lead 
to the development of a rich, pure tone and a 
brilliant thrill." Harsh, nasal, tuneless, broken 
or weak voices were made sweet, melodious and 
powerful under Madame's direction. The cure 
of catarrh, bronchial and lung trouble was in- 
cluded in the surprising results to be derived 
from Madame's method. 

Madame declared I had great possibilities in 
my voice, and so the lessons began. I had to 
sing out certain vowels, watching my mouth in 



CURED 161 

a mirror. It was very embarrassing ! When I 
returned home that night I continued to see 
every gold filling and crown in both jaws. But 
Madame was relentless; she practiced the 
"Italian method." I confess I thought my tone 
production harsh and nasal; certainly there 
was nothing brilliant about it. After a few les- 
sons Madame said, "Well, you wish these les- 
sons to help the speaking voice, is it not?" 
I assured her I did. Madame had several pupils 
who gave her testimonials that the quality and 
volume of all their tones were vastly improved 
by her lessons. If I could only develop one 
good, clarion note, I could use that note with 
pleasure to myself and surprise to my friends. 
Besides, I should learn to breathe right and 
build up a buoyant health. 

After a few weeks of these lessons in voice 
and breath culture I realized that Madame's 
claims for voices were rather extravagant. 
Moreover, I never struck that great note. One 
day Madame made me read for an hour to her. 
Noticing I was not the least bit hoarse, she 
said, "Your breathing method seems all right." 



CHAPTER X 

Foreign Travel — Balsamic Exudations — 
Marathon Running — Ben Hur Rowing — Fresh 
Water Swimming. 

THE cure-chase was still on. I met a pro- 
fessor at a hotel and discussed cures with 
him, as he said something about doctors 
being humbugs. He declared that he had a 
girl cousin who had suffered for months with 
acute throat trouble, diagnosed at first as dis- 
ease of the tonsils, then of the larynx, and 
finally of the post naval cavity. The poor girl 
suffered so much that she could not swallow 
food except by pulling downward on her ears 
in the act of deglutition, which made dining out 
an embarrassing pastime. After visiting many 
"specialists" and other "scientific" men, it was 
finally discovered that all her troubles were due 
to the late eruption of her wisdom teeth. 

After I had related my cures to the pro- 
fessor, he became very thoughtful; then sud- 
denly he exclaimed, "Have you tried the 

FOREIGN TRAVEL CURE?" 

(162) 



CURED 163 

No, I had not tried foreign travel. He im- 
mediately mapped out a plan. It was to take 
me to Canada with him on his vacation. We 
would make the great trip down the St. Law- 
rence to old Quebec. "Make up your mind it 
is going to do you a world of good," he said, as 
we took the train for Canada. He explained 
that the merits for the new cure consisted in 
visiting new scenes, hearing a foreign lan- 
guage, walking on foreign soil and eating for- 
eign food. The professor said the foreign 
travel cure had been taken by one of his nerv- 
ous friends with lasting good results. We 
left the train for the steamer. The first night 
was most fascinating. The moonlight playing 
on the water, the gentle breeze fanning our faces 
and, above all, the peace and quiet enchanted 
me. I slept very well that night ; but the next 
day I was as nervous and restless as of yore. 
Again and again the professor implored me to 
sit down and enjoy the scenery, but I had to 
walk around the steamer and see who was 
aboard, just as though the steamer were a train. 
I could not sit still for five minutes. We ar- 
rived at Montreal, where we spent a day, and 
then journeyed to Quebec. The foreign food 
was an agreeable change. I should have en- 



164 CURED 



joyed it more had not sitting in the hotel din- 
ing-room proved a veritable martyrdom. "You 
are indeed nervous," said the professor. He 
decided to take me to Lake St. Joseph, a few 
miles north. "We are going to drop the for- 
eign travel cure for a little while and try a new 
one," he said. 

This cure was to consist of "Balsam." He 
said that all round the hotel at St. Joseph were 
balsam fir trees, known to botanists as "abies 
balsamea." Their odor, declared the learned 
man, was a "fragrant exudation," to which 
wonderful nerve-soothing and healing powers 
are attributed. The professor accentuated the 
properties of the balsam fir trees by quoting 
Tennyson : 

"Was not the people's blessing as we past 
Heart comfort and balsam to thy blood ?" 

As soon as we arrived at St. Joseph I be- 
gan to take deep inhalations of the fir-medicated 
aromas, and I think they did me no harm. I 
slept fairly well, had a good appetite and man- 
aged to put in some very pleasant hours walk- 
ing under the fir trees in the company of sev- 
eral charming Quebec ladies. 

After some days of this treatment I found 
sitting at the dining table as much of a martyr- 



CURED 165 

dom as before. The professor was disap- 
pointed. "We must try something else," he 
remarked ; this fir balsam is not doing the work 
for you, though it makes me feel better every 
minute." 

The professor had been an athlete in his 
younger days; he declared that athletics were 
all right if practiced intelligently and kept up 
after leaving college. He thought that run- 
ning, under the direction of an intelligent 
trainer, might build me up and help me break 
the shackles of nervousness with the ease of 
Houdini, the handcuff king. 

It was indeed fortunate that at our hotel we 
found a runner, a professional runner who had 
a record. This Marathonian was about five 
feet ten inches tall, and a finely built man. He 
said that in his youth he had been weak and 
puny, but a strong desire to become an athlete 
had spurred him on to develop his muscles and 
his lungs. He was now preparing to compete 
with the world's greatest long-distance run- 
ners. His diet and his method of training were 
matters of great interest to me. He did most 
of his running in a bathing suit. 

The professor advised me to start right in 
and learn how to run — that is, how to breathe 



166 CURED 

so as to stand the strain. The Marathonian 
said he usually ran about five miles before 
breakfast to warm himself up. I began trying 
a hundred yards. It was not a run, but more 
of a fox trot I executed. The Marathonian 
counseled me not to be discouraged; in time I 
should get better wind. I told him a teacher of 
singing had discovered that I breathed cor- 
rectly. 

I tried hard to keep up the training. I did 
manage to develop a fairly good dog trot, fox 
trot and canter, but that was about all. Those 
hundred-yard dashes prostrated me. Speeding 
seemed to make my nerves worse. I had read 
in a medical magazine that any treatment 
which greatly aggravated the symptoms should 
be used with extreme caution. I determined to 
be careful. The Marathonian must have been 
dissatisfied with my progress, since he finally 
called me off the race track and proposed to put 
me through the "Ben Hur Cure." 

The name of this cure aroused my interest, 
as I had read the book, "Ben Hur," by Lew 
Wallace. The cure consisted in rowing at one 
oar, just as Ben Hur had done while a galley 
slave ; but in place of a Roman galley, we used 
a flat-bottomed boat. Rowing was a daily ex- 



CURED 167 

ercise of the great runner, since he found that 
a five-mile trot merely warmed him up. I was 
put to rowing. I had rowed a boat before, but 
not in competition with such an athlete as the 
one who pulled the other oar. He kept me very 
busy. Soon I became winded and begged him 
to slacken up a bit. The Marathonian ex- 
plained that the rowing exercise is splendid for 
the chest and, combined with bicycle riding, 
made the entire body strong. Rowing did not 
do much for the legs, he declared, at least in 
the kind of boat we were in. 

I rowed and rowed. After a while he gave 
me both oars to manipulate, and I pulled them 
with great vigor, but only for a few minutes. 
At night I found the abdominal muscles were 
as sore as though a dozen cannon balls had been 
rolled around that region. My fingers had the 
sensations that one of those presidential candi- 
dates complained of after shaking hands with 
five thousand admirers. The professor said I 
showed symptoms of "exhausting depletion." 
No, the cure did not seem to be indicated in my 
case. 

My Marathon guide to health had a fund of 
resourcefulness that was marvelous. He said 
if rowing and running were not suited to me, 



168 CURED 



I should try swimming in fresh water. I had 
tried salt water in the ocean and salt water, 
very salty, in the tub ; but I had not tried swim- 
ming in fresh water. I was anxious to discuss 
the new "cure" with my friend, the professor. 
He expressed the opinion there could be no 
danger in trying the fresh-water bathing. He 
added, "I knew a physician who made his chil- 
dren take this cure for symptoms of St. Vitus' 
dance. The cure of disease by water was 
known to the Greek, the Roman and the 
Arabian physicians. Hippocrates wrote a 
treatise on this subject, whilst French, German 
and American physicians have paid much at- 
tention to hydrotherapeutics in recent years. 
The cold bath stimulates the skin and nervous 
system. Cold causes the capillaries of the skin 
to contract and, consequently, the blood is 
driven at great speed to the deeper parts. Then 
a reaction ensues. The cutaneous vessels 
dilate to a greater caliber than before the shock 
and the blood rushes freely to the surface. A 
glow of heat results and the skin flushes. The 
heart's action is strengthened and, above all, 
the nervous system is braced. The cold bath 
has done wonders for the English nation, and 
now is regarded the world over as one of the 



CURED 169 



safest and surest preventives of colds. I 
should think it would be indicated in your case 
in the form of swimming, to brace up the nerv- 
ous system. Sample this new treatment." 

The first noticeable effect of my plunge into 
the icy Canadian lake was a deep inspiration or 
gasp, followed by fuller but irregular breath- 
ing. The capillaries of the skin were doubtless 
contracting, as the professor said they would, 
but there was not that resultant glow of the 
skin after the bath. Perhaps I stayed in the 
water too long. The next day I spent only five 
minutes in the lake. I came out weaker, but 
the Marathon man made me stick to the treat- 
ment. I felt no change for the better ; indeed, 
I experienced "new morbid manifestations," as 
one medical writer calls them. I looked blue 
under the eyes, whilst my finger tips were 
drawn up and wrinkled. The professor begged 
me not to give up the cold-water bathing cure 
without a thorough trial. He said that water 
itself is not dangerous, even if one is immersed 
in it for hours, days or weeks. He had read of 
a Viennese skin specialist who kept one of his 
patients in water for over half a year ! "But 
the trouble with my immersion in water here 



170 CURED 

seems not so much the water, but the low tem- 
perature/' I said. 

"O, if it is too cold, that is another matter," 
answered the professor. "You might follow 
the suggestion offered by Jules Verne in one of 
his books, to grease the body with lard before 
taking the plunge; you thereby protect the skin 
from cold." But at last the professor and I 
agreed that Canadian cures were not indicated 
in my case, so we returned to the United States. 



CHAPTER XI 

Barber Chair Repose — Tonsil Gargling — 
Tunis Fenugreek Seed Fattener — Complete Si- 
lence. 

ON the way home I met a girl who appeared 
to have the poise, peace and power I so 
desired. She could sit still for hours, 
both on the boat and in the train. She was a 
tall blonde. Her name was Miss Cabot, and 
she came from Boston. I could not sit still long 
enough to talk to her for any length of time; 
besides, I was conscious that I was pulling my 
hair while I made the attempt to bridle an im- 
pulse to shuffle in my chair. But Miss Cabot 
showed no signs of surprise at my behavior. 
She was cold and immutable and had control 
over her facial expression that would have 
made even a Japanese sit up with admiration. I 
decided to fathom the secret of this wonderful 
control. I remembered a physician's remark, 
that I would never be able to conquer my nerves 
until I put on more flesh. 

"Will you tell me how to become fat?" I 
asked boldly. 

(171) 



172 CURED 



The Boston girl looked at me and answered, 
"I think that is something most people wish to 
avoid." 

I feare3 I had insulted her. I hastened to 
explain: "How is it that you manage to re- 
main so quiet?" She looked at me calmly, and 
replied, "Through the Placid Life— I lead it." 

Was this the life that engendered soul se- 
renity suggestive of eternal rest? I hoped the 
Placid Life was simpler to practice than Poise. 

Before disembarking, the professor said to 
me: "There is no failure except when one 
ceases to try. I do not wish to see you give up 
your search for the cure." 

I had not been back in the 'varsity town a 
week before many of my friends asked me what 
had made me so thin. "Cold baths and exer- 
cise," I responded with some dejection. 

I met a California tourist at a hotel. He was 
going out to the coast to spend the fall. He 
had suffered from dyspepsia and he recognized 
a fellow-victim by the pained expression on my 
face. 

"I am going to suggest something to you," 
he said. "You have to work to be happy. So 
has everyone with a nervous temperament like 



CURED 173 



yours. Now, if you are like the average Ameri- 
can man, you rush back to work right after 
meals, don't you?" 

I assured him that such was my custom, 
though I had also taken prolonged rest cures. 

"Well," he said, "we are talking of a cure in 
conjunction with your work. Now, even a dog 
knows enough to lie down after the noon-day 
meal. We must do the same. That was the 
secret of Russell Sage's great strength and re- 
cuperative power ; he had a wicker couch in his 
office and used to recline on it after the noon- 
day meal, so I read in a New York paper. I am 
convinced that the noon-day meal, followed by 
the rush and tear of our American life, is re- 
sponsible for your dyspepsia. It was so in my 
case ; yet I found a cure." 

"Where and how?" I asked in excitement. 

"In the barber shop," he replied. 

"In the barber shop?" I echoed. 

"After luncheon, or whatever you wish to 
call the noon-day meal, you go to your favorite 
barber and get a shave. A shave a day will not 
hurt you, and will keep your appearance neat. 
It will require twenty minutes or more, espe- 
cially if you have a garrulous barber to do it. 
Try every barber in the shop and pick out the 



174 CURED 



most talkative. By that means you can stretch 
your shave to thirty minutes. It won't cost 
you more than fifteen cents, and that is only 
ninety cents a week, a very economical cure. 
The horizontal position in which you lie, and 
the comfort of that leather upholstered chair, 
make the cure ideal. The success of treatments 
in many an expensive sanitarium is due to the 
horizontal position enforced after meals. I 
have an analytical mind and I discovered that. 
I also found that I could save about $34.10 each 
week by taking my horizontal repose in a bar- 
ber shop instead of lounging in an invalid's 
chair on a sanitarium porch. Now try it, and 
you will find it a corking cure for chronic dys- 
pepsia." 

Try it? Why not? Of course, I had not 
been going to barber shops to get shaved. I 
had been too nervous for that. The monthly 
ordeal of a hair cut was enough. I used a 
Gillette at home, so that I could walk around 
the room while shaving. Barber shop repose ! 
Well, I might try, and perhaps I could find a 
barber who could put up with my fidgets and 
shuffling around in the chair. 

I was greatly encouraged to try the cure by 
reading that a man who had been blind for ten 



CURED 175 



years and, after visiting all the specialists in 
Europe, had suddenly been restored to sight by 
a Los Angeles barber. One day while reclining 
in a barber's chair the electric massage was ap- 
plied to his face. The vibrating rubber cup 
struck a nerve and awakened it from its ten 
years' slumber; the eyesight returned first to 
one eye and then to the other. A barber had 
cured blindness ! Perhaps a barber could cure 
nervous dyspepsia. 

I visited the tonsorial parlors and told the 
barber I wished to be shaved as slowly as pos- 
sible. I cautioned him to be careful not to cut 
me, as I was very nervous. I also told him I 
wished he would tell me his views on the tariff 
question. He had a hard time. I wriggled 
around in the chair, and again and again he had 
to raise his razor. He cut me slightly on the 
cheek, but said it was because I was rather thin 
in the face. He found it very difficult to avoid 
cutting me when I twitched so suddenly. I am 
sure he spent as unpleasant a half hour as I. 
But I was not going to give up, for the rest 
after the meal would surely do me good. I tried 
it the next day and the next. Each time he cut 
me slightly and rubbed some kind of an alum 
pencil on the wound. By the end of a week, 



176 CURED 



while I had not spent much money for the 
treatment, my face looked like that of a Heidel- 
berg student. 

On the eighth day the barber cut me pretty 
badly. He said it was because I jumped. He 
could not help it. He would apply disinfectants 
and plaster. 

"Does it pain very much?" asked the barber, 
with a show of sympathy. 

"I do not mind the pain, but I think the loss 
of blood will prove weakening, ,, I replied. 
"Perhaps I had better shave myself until my 
face heals." 

The wounds did heal eventually, but by the 
time the court-plaster was removed I had lost 
all desire for "barber chair repose" after the 
noon-day meal. 

I had now hunted a cure for eight years. 
Certainly I did not lack persistency. I still 
stuck to newspaper work, but my nervous 
trouble grew worse and worse. I began to have 
a new ailment, ringing in the ears. I read up 
on the subject in my book "Household Medi- 
cine" and found its medical name was "tinnitus 
aurium." I decided to consult a specialist. He 
recommended inflating the ear by means of a 
silver tube. The operation performed twice a 






CURED 177 

week was very ticklish and cost me two dollars 
each time. I obtained some relief. Then I con- 
sulted another "aurist," and he said that he did 
not wish to rob me of four dollars a week and 
would be frank about my case. He said I had 
had adenoids when a youngster and that the 
septum of my nose would have to be straight- 
ened by surgery. As these two aurists could 
not agree, I went to Baltimore and consulted a 
third, who found that the cause of the bell 
sounds and explosions in the ear was due to an 
inflamed tonsil. He doctored my tonsils with 
gargling of alkolol, warning me never to mis- 
take the name for "alcohol," as had one of his 
patients, doing irreparable injury. The aurist 
said I was very nervous and that he was sure 
my tonsils made me thin and wretched ; his ton- 
sils were responsible for a similar trouble, 
which induced him to become a throat specialist. 
He said one of his patients, a lady, had her ton- 
sils removed and had gained sixty pounds as 
the result. He said if the explosions in the ear 
kept up, I would have to have that left tonsil 
removed. I went home and found that the gar- 
gling did me good, for the swelling diminished 
and so did the noises ; but I did not gain weight. 
I might add that, on the train back to my 



178 CURED 

'varsity town, I met a man who gave me much 
encouragement in cure-hunting, despite the fact 
I had rounded out eight years without finding 
my cure. 

"Don't give up until you take your last 
breath," he said; "for down in South Carolina 
I knew an old fellow who suffered seventeen 
years with a coughing trouble, which doctors 
diagnosed as incurable consumption. One 
day the old fellow coughed worse than usual 
and out came a tooth which had gone down 
his left lung. He got better right off and 
gained forty pounds, going up to his customary 
weight of one hundred and eighty. So you see 
you never can tell what nature may do for you." 

How to become fat, that was the question. I 
began to read literature on the problem. There 
was plenty of literature on how to become thin, 
but very little on how to grow fat. I saw head- 
lines, "Conflict of Love and Fat," advertising a 
fat-reducing medicine. At last I made a dis- 
covery. I read of the introduction into this 
country of "Fenugreek," a seed brought over 
from Tunis, Africa. I looked up Fenugreek in 
the dictionary. The Standard, which has 
317,000 words, said of it : "An Old World herb 
of the bean family, having strong-scented 



CURED 179 

leaves and edible mucilaginous seeds." It was 
said to be used by the Jewish maidens in Tunis 
to increase their weight to three hundred 
pounds in order to make them matrimonially 
eligible. The seed could be eaten powdered ; it 
not merely aided, but forced assimilation. 
The United States Government was experi- 
menting with these seeds, I was informed. A 
picture of some of the results of its use was 
published in the National Geographical Mag- 
azine. Two rather husky-looking maidens 
were shown who must have each weighed at 
least three hundred pounds. My, what arms 
and ankles they had! And their necks, they 
were of the goiter style seen in the Tyrol. I 
should be cautious about taking anything so 
powerful as Fenugreek. 

Then a great man passed through our Var- 
sity town, Horace Fletcher, world-famed as an 
authority on diet. Certainly, if any man in the 
world knew how one should get fat, Mr. 
Fletcher must know. 

I interviewed Mr. Fletcher, who was the 
picture of plumpness. I had read his books; 
had Fletcherized those dog biscuits Dr. Brick- 
ner gave me — still I thought Mr. Fletcher could 
give me some hints. 



180 CURED 

"You wish to become fat ?" said Mr. Fletcher 
in surprise, as we sat in his room. "Why?" 

I told him there was lots of literature on the 
disadvantages of being lean, and even Shakes- 
peare had pointed out that the lean and hungry 
Cassius was an eyesore to Caesar. Fletcher said 
that many great men had been lean; Lincoln 
was lean, the great Napoleon was also lean 
when he was doing his best work, such as cross- 
ing the Alps. He added, "If you are deter- 
mined to have a plump face, buy ten cents worth 
of chewing gum and stick it in your cheeks. ,, 

"What do you think of Fenugreek as a fat- 
tener?" I asked. 

"Fenugreek?'' echoed the authority on diet; 
"why I never heard of it before !" 

That was a jolt. I told Mr. Fletcher all 
about it. The hotel clerk told me later that 
Mr. Fletcher paid me a high compliment, call- 
ing me a "brilliant man." 

I kept up my determination to get fat at all 
costs. I was encouraged by reading the follow- 
ing advertisement of a fat-medicine concern: 
"Remember, it never pays to look shrunk; men 
and women don't like to associate with dried- 
ups. Plumpness and prosperity are twins. 
Men flee from wrinkles and bony necks." 



CURED 181 



Of course, I did not take the fat medicine, for 
I had ceased having confidence in medicines. 
But Fenugreek was a seed, and the dictionary- 
said an edible one. It could do no harm, and 
might do good. I began taking Fenugreek in 
small doses, also drinking the water which had 
been left on the seed over night. The water 
was very bitter and was supposed to have a 
tonic effect like nux vomica. 

I took the seeds for some time, but I could 
not notice by the scales that any forcing of as- 
similation was going on in my system. The 
Fenugreek was so bitter it proved a thorny road 
to "plumpness and prosperity. " 

I mentioned the seed to a druggist. He 
looked it up in his Pharmacopia and exclaimed, 
"Why, we use that seed in condition powders 
for horses!" The druggist said Fenugreek was 
supposed to give horses a glossy coat. Every 
time he saw me he exclaimed, "Are you put- 
ting on any gloss ?" 

I chucked the mucilaginous seeds away. 
* All day Sunday I tossed about in my Morris 
chair thinking over another cure. I could not 
keep still. 

Suddenly my reveries were cut short by a 
violent knock at the door. In came Hagen, the 



182 CURED 

pianist. He had a look of cheerful courage in 
his face that I liked to see. 

"I wish to ask you a great favor," he said, 
hurriedly. "Will you recommend me for the 
post of music director at a college in the 
South ?" 

I recommend him ? What did I know about 
music? And what weight would my recom- 
mendations have? He replied I could do a great 
deal, as I had written many criticisms of ar- 
tists and had been a music editor of a paper. 
The idea ! Well, he needed help, and so I drew 
a chair to a desk and wrote him a very flattering 
testimonial. 

Then we discussed cures. He admitted that 
I was looking worse, and he said he thought it 
was from incessant talking, which, he declared, 
was a great tax on the vitality. 

"If I were you," he said, "I should take the 
"Silence Cure." I myself had to take it once, 
owing to a nervous breakdown. Talking is a 
tremendous drain on a man's vitality, although 
it does not seem to hurt a woman," he added. • 

I had practiced abstinence from meat, from 
starch, from all food. I had never yet refrained 
from talking. Why not give it a trial ? 

The Norwegian continued: "Neurasthenia 



CURED 183 



is weakness of the nerves. All such troubles 
are simply lack of control, a slipping of the 
brakes. Now this condition is nothing in the 
world but brain starvation. If you cannot as- 
similate food to nourish the brain, then you 
must rest the brain. If you cannot walk on a 
broken leg, rest the leg until the bone mends. 
That is logic/' 

"Where is the best place to take the Silence 
Cure?" I asked. 

"At the home of Mrs. Parsimmons, on the 
hill," he replied instantly. 

"But why there?" I persisted. 

"Because she is away most of the time and 
her daughters are deaf-mutes." 

Well, there would be no harm in changing 
rooms. I had done that before. I took his card 
and visited Mrs. Parsimmons. Soon I had a 
room at her house. I met her daughters. One 
was named Vonciel, Mrs. Parsimmons explain- 
ing that the name had been given by a German 
minister and his wife, "Von" meaning (in Ger- 
man) "Of" and "Ciel" being French for 
Heaven. The other girl had a less heavenly 
name, Trixie. 

The home was indeed restful, and suited to 
take the silence cure to perfection. Mrs. Par- 



184 CURED 



Simmons usually dined with us in the evening 
and talked to her daughters by signs. They 
talked to me by writing and were very quick 
with the pencil. 

Mrs. Parsimmons soon understood I did not 
wish to talk much with my mouth, and began 
to teach me the sign language. It was inter- 
esting and I made some progress. 

I enjoyed the silence cure. The house was 
so restful one could have heard a pin drop. 

Though Vonciel and Trixie never talked or 
laughed, they occasionally made sweeping ges- 
tures to indicate great mirth. Three times a 
day one of the girls produced prolonged ap- 
plause by clapping her hands. 'Twas the sig- 
nal that meals were ready. 

I led a peculiar life while in that house. I 
soon realized that a man is profoundly influ- 
enced by his surroundings. Before long I 
found myself, when in a store, making signs for 
things I wished to buy. I once heard a cus- 
tomer remark of me, "He's a deaf-mute, eh?" 
And the clerk replied, "Either that or nutty." 

And after weeks and weeks I really believed 
my health improved. I saved vitality, I rested 
my brain. Finally, I put the cure to a great test 
by going to a musical affair. But the old-time 



CURED 185 



enemy would not let me alone. In the middle 
of the concert I felt the same irresistible im- 
pulse to leave the hall. My shoes creaked ter- 
ribly and annoyed the violinist. I was 
embarrassed to the last degree, but to attempt 
to sit still in that place was too much of a 
martyrdom. 

Alas, I was not yet cured, even by the silent 
life! 



CHAPTER XII 
Stair Climbing — Dead Game Sport Philosophy. 

TO encourage me a friend of mine related 
the case of a young lady of Reading, Pa., 
who had swallowed a water lizard. After 
much suffering, and when she was ready to give 
up hope, the ingenuity of her brother saved her 
life. He ordered her to live on salt water for 
two days. At the end of that time he held a 
cup of hot melted butter in front of her open 
mouth in order to tempt the stomach robber to 
come up. The lizard had become desperately 
hungry, and the lady felt him wriggling around 
in her stomach, causing a tickling sensation 
which nearly drove her into hysterics. The 
odor of the hot butter fetched the lizard to her 
mouth. With a silk handkerchief wound 
round the brother's hand to avoid any slippery 
backsliding, the rascal was collared and pulled 
out. My friend suggested that my troubles 
might be caused by harboring some kind of 
lizard. He suggested I should consult one of 

the great physical directors of the university to 

(186) 



CURED 187 

see if he did not have some exercises which 
would pull out the water animal that was tan- 
talizing my stomach and giving me such queer 
nervous twitches throughout my body. So I 
called on one of the noted physical directors, 
named Morrison, and told him my story. He 
asked me, "Have you tried the primer of all ex- 
ercises, bag punching ?" 

I told him I had a bag-punching outfit in the 
cellar of my house. I had used it a little, but 
after meeting a famous bag puncher, who gave 
an exhibition at a local theatre, I discontinued 
the exercise. The famous bag puncher could 
punch eight bags at one time, for he was a 
marvel. When I interviewed him after a per- 
formance, he told me that he suffered with dys- 
pepsia, which he attributed to his violent exer- 
cise. 

"Have you tried rowing machines ?" asked 
Morrison. 

I told him I had tried rowing, but the exer- 
cise had aggravated my troubles. 

"You have tried doctors, specialists, medi- 
cines, air, water and all that sort of thing?" he 
continued. 

I said I had. The instructor was amazed. 

"There is only one thing I can suggest/' he 



188 CURED 

remarked, "and that is a mild form of exercise 
which might do a lot of good without overtax- 
ing you." 

"What is it?" I replied, without attempting 
to conceal my curiosity. 

"Stair climbing," he answered. "One of the 
world's famous athletes who went over to 
Greece and performed great feats was trained 
in Boston on stair climbing. He carried crates 
of bottles up four, five and six flights of stairs 
while working for a bottling establishment. 
Try stair climbing. It is a splendid tonic for 
the heart and, in fact, for all the organs." 

The most suitable place to take the new 
cure would be some high office building, but 
but there was none in town. I was therefore 
forced to attempt the cure at home. I wrote 
Vonciel a note telling- her I had been recom- 
mended to climb stairs. The next morning my 
exercises began. Mrs. Parsimmons asked me 
that evening what I had been doing, and I told 
her of the new treatment. On Sunday a gen- 
tleman called and took dinner with us. He 
talked to me a good deal, and later I found out 
he was a physician. Mrs. Parsimmons finally 
confessed that he was her family doctor, and 
that she had brought him to the house to see 



CURED 189 

what he thought of my ailment. He had as- 
sured her my mind was all right; I had talked 
coherently. I decided to climb no more stairs 
at home, but I would try the medicine else- 
where. 

Whilst walking around the city the next 
afternoon an inspiration struck me. Nearly 
every house in that college town displayed the 
sign "rooms for rent." Why shouldn't I 
make a business of room hunting for the next 
few weeks? There was enough raw material 
to furnish the exercise recommended by Di- 
rector Morrison. 

I bought a map of the city and marked it out 
in blocks of one, two, three, etc. Each day I 
would do a block. Then I thought up a glossary 
of excuses to give for not renting the rooms. 
My favorite excuse was to say, "Well, I shall 
let you know by note to-morrow if I wish to 
rent the room." Needless to say, the note was 
never written. Other schemes were to declare 
that the room did not have much light, the 
heating arrangements were unsatisfactory, or 
the clothes-press was not large enough; the 
room was on the third story and I preferred the 
second, and so on. 

As a reporter with long experience, ringing 



190 CURED 

door bells of strange houses, ferreting out 
elopements and other human interest stories, I 
did not blush at my conduct. At the first house 
I was well received. My peaked look, my 
glasses and tired eyes, proclaimed me a book- 
worm, perhaps even an instructor or professor. 
The studious-looking room-seeker was, of 
course, the most desired by landladies. The 
room I visited was on the second story. I found 
the exercise going up stairs was very agreeable. 
I tried to walk on the ball of my foot as Mr. 
Morrison had instructed. Then I went to the 
next house and I worked up north, and down 
south again. I must have gone to a dozen or 
more houses that afternoon. It was splendid 
exercise and the people who showed the rooms 
did not object to the trouble I gave them. The 
landladies interested me more than the rooms. 
Some were young, others middle aged; some 
very far from attractive, and others pretty good 
to look at. And what a "line of talk" I heard ! 
Some of the landladies were very taciturn, 
others were garrulous and kept me standing 
at the top of the stairs for a quarter of an hour 
at a time. 

I confess that after a few days of this cure I 
found supper came around with increased in- 






CURED 191 



terest. I began to believe that stair climbing 
was really good for assimilation. I was 
mighty glad I had met Physical Director Mor- 
rison. 

After a while the stereotyped remark, "I 
shall let you know by a note to-morrow/' be- 
came very tiresome. Surely a man with a 
journalistic vocabulary ought to be able to do 
better. Occasionally I had to be as slippery as 
an eel not to get caught without an excuse, for 
some of the landladies were persistent creatures 
and extremely accommodating, even offering to 
switch around their present roomers, if neces- 
sary. When the most persistent ladies had suc- 
cessfully met all my objections I would say, 
"Yes, that would be very nice and it is ex- 
tremely kind of you, but do you think I could 
get a grand piano up those stairs and into the 
room?" That was always final. A grand 
piano could scarcely go up the stairs in any 
house in that town without the landlady re- 
modeling the staircase. 

I had taken the stair-climbing cure for over a 
month and I sent word every week to Mr. Mor- 
rison to say that I was doing splendidly. I 
slept and ate better, and in time I was sure the 
nerves would quiet down. 



192 CURED 

Then a most unfortunate accident occurred. 
I grew careless and instead of carrying my city 
map, I trusted to memory to determine which 
houses I had already visited. One afternoon I 
called at a house and asked for rooms. The 
landlady looked at me rather suspiciously, but 
showed me up-stairs. But when I saw the room 
I could not help showing my embarrassment. 
I had visited that room before. How could I 
have made such a mistake ? It was gross care- 
lessness. The landlady was one of the few who 
had cornered me at my first visit. I had to 
spring on her the grand piano gag and she had 
met the objection by offering to let me use the 
grand piano in the parlor. The landlady 
watched me cautiously. After surveying the 
room I decided to beat a retreat. She said in 
icy tones, "You were here before, were you 
not?" I replied that it was possible, but per- 
haps I had confused the houses and would she 
pardon me for thus troubling her ? 

Did she overlook the incident? Not she. As 
soon as I was out of the house she telephoned to 
the police a description of me and told the 
authorities that I was a "Second Story 
Worker"; she had observed me "operating" 
on the entire block to get the lay of the land. 






CURED 193 

Further, I had the audacity to call at her house 
twice to get a better idea of how to have my 
"pals" break in. There was quite a hubbub. 
The police reporter of our paper told me the 
story, the chief having given him the "tip" on 
the understanding that the story should not be 
printed until the culprit was caught. 

That ended stair climbing and all other ath- 
letic "cures." But a new treatment was sug- 
gested by a friend in town from Buenos Aires, 
who had been, until recently, a student at the 
University. He had apparently distinguished 
himself less as a student than as a dancer, 
singer, poet and what not. I dubbed him the 
"Duke" and he seemed pleased with the title. 
One day he told me that in his country a popu- 
lar form of treatment for chronic nervous dys- 
pepsia was to become a "dead game sport"; 
send all the doctors to the dogs, eat what, when, 
and as much as one liked; drink wine, smoke 
cigarettes and keep late and irregular hours. 
The Duke insisted that I give up the ascetic life 
and lead the aesthetic, which he himself fol- 
lowed. The Duke's daily program was to rise 
about noon, taking a light breakfast at a differ- 
ent cafe every morning. A good deal of his 
afternoon was spent in listening to the latest 

13 



194 CURED 

selections on the Victor Victrola, smoking 
cigarettes and dreaming sweet dreams about 
"the banquet of life." He called on distin- 
guished actors, actresses, prima donnas and 
others in the limelight of achievement, procur- 
ing autographed photos from them to decorate 
his walls. 

"You must become the soul of irregularity," 
he counseled me. Perhaps his reasoning was 
sound. At all events he had persuasive powers, 
and soon I was leading the irregular life. We 
met many interesting people. Sometimes the 
Duke would disappear mysteriously, saying he 
had important matters to attend to. I later 
found out he had a sweetheart in the city. 

The Duke said that the pictures of actresses 
were a perpetual inspiration to him ; "their look 
of cheerful courage is enough to make any- 
one look up to a brighter to-morrow." 

After about a month of the "dead game 
sport life," of the soul of irregularity existence, 
I found myself in a wretched state of health, 
bordering on collapse. My throat seemed raw 
from the Duke's foreign cigarettes; my stom- 
ach was in a worse than dyspeptic state, and my 
eyes looked like those of an insomnia victim. I 
did not call a doctor. I thought I knew what 



CURED 195 

to do for myself. I went to bed for a week on 
the porch, taking the silence, open air, rest and 
a few other cures at once. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Romance and Mystery — Dr. Oxford and the 
Simple Life. 

WHEN I next saw the Duke I told him I 
had bade farewell to the aesthetic life 
with the soul of irregularity as its key- 
note. He took me home to dinner. We were 
alone. Toward the end of the dinner he said, 
suddenly: "A first-class romantic love afifair 
would make you forget all your nervousness 
and dyspepsia." I told the Duke that I had 
kept free from romances for several reasons : I 
had no time to write billets doux while fighting 
for lost health. I was too nervous to make 
afternoon calls, go to theatres and dances, and 
the most important reason of all — my doctors 
had distinctly warned me to shun love, cham- 
pagne and cigarettes, saying they were ex- 
citants beyond my power of endurance. 

"Do not pay any attention to doctors," mut- 
tered the Duke. "Did not a great cardinal tell 
you to shun the medicos ? Take it from me, ro- 
mance is the cure you need. I'll tell you the 

type of girl you must fall in love with. She 

(196) 



CURED 197 

must have eyes like forest pools, reflecting the 
glories of nature, the vocal brown eyes that will 
tell her mind is a golden bowl filled with treas- 
ures rare indeed to find. Then the eyelashes 
should be long and velvety, and the eyebrows, 
ah, they must be the recherche, finely arched 
brows that are termed 'musical/ an indescrib- 
able characteristic of a poetic, romantic temper- 
ament. Those are the main requisites, and 
when you find those eyes and they speak their 
message, you will fall so deep into their ocular 
depths that the delightful intoxication of ro- 
mance will effect a cure. To know that you 
love a woman and that she loves you is to walk 
on AIR." 

I left the Duke late that night, interested but 
not convinced. I was still weighing the Duke's 
ideas as I rode in a street car next day. I felt 
somehow there were ladies standing back of my 
seat. I looked around and saw two girls cling- 
ing to straps. I offered the nearer one my seat. 
She was an attractive blonde with eyes of melt- 
ing blue, in which flickered a suggestion of that 
baby stare assumed by consummate artists in 
flirting. Then I looked at the other and I saw 
she carried an umbrella. The umbrella was 
dripping and would soil her beautiful silk dress. 



198 CURED 



Without a moment's hesitation I boldly said to 
her, "May I hold your umbrella for you?" She 
looked at me. I felt electrified and scarcely 
heard her reply, "I can hold it, thank you!" 

What eyes that woman had ; they talked, they 
sang, they had all the qualities and accomplish- 
ments the Duke had raved over ! The eyebrows 
were glorious, the lashes long, black, silky. 

No doubt that girl had a mind as wonderful 
as her glances were thrilling. When she 
alighted from the car with her companion, I 
followed at a discreet distance to see where they 
lived. It was 515 Washington Avenue. In 
less than a week I had found out her name: 
Adrienne! 

I related my experience to the Duke. He 
manifested sympathetic exultation. "Let me 
tell you what to do," he said. "We must write 
her a poem in French. We shall typewrite it 
on silk and begin each verse in red ink, red 
being the color of love. The rest of the letter- 
ing will be in purple, the regal color, the rarest 
color in nature. And together with the poem 
we must send some American Beauty roses, red 
roses." 

"But," I protested, "I have not been intro- 
duced to the young lady !" 



CURED 199 



"It would spoil everything if you had," re- 
torted the Duke. "A woman dearly loves a 
mystery. Americans make love in a very pro- 
saic way. That's why so many of your girls 
marry foreigners, who know how to woo and 
win/' The Duke was clever and experienced. 
He had studied love-making in Europe and 
South America; he had practiced it in the 
United States. 

While he was preparing his poem in French 
I was riding past Washington Avenue ten 
times a day with the hope of getting another 
glimpse of Adrienne. But I did not see her. 
One afternoon, after a football game, I had bet- 
ter luck. We came face to face in a car. I had 
the exquisite pleasure of giving her my seat. 
She sat down and I stood in front of her, ad- 
miring her eyes. The car gave a sudden jolt 
and then Adrienne was suddenly thrown back 
into her seat. Her dainty foot shot out and 
grazed my shin. It was the Dupont Circle 
experience reversed! She apologized and 
smiled. 

I told the Duke all about it and he waxed 
jubilant, declaring it would serve as a "motif' 
in his poem, which would help her solve the 



200 CURED 

mystery of the identity of the sender. We 
wrote the poem on a red-purple ribboned type- 
writer and sent it with some American Beauties 
to dear Adrienne at her home. We sent the 
roses on a Tuesday. A ball was to take place 
on Friday. The Duke had it figured out mathe- 
matically that in three days, with a house tem- 
perature of about seventy degrees, the roses 
would be full blown and easily identified if she 
wore them. 

I went to the ball Friday night. My heart 
pounded with delight when I saw Adrienne 
wearing two of the roses. (I did not attempt 
to dance as I felt too ill.) The Duke said: 
"Splendid, old man! I told you, romance ap- 
peals to these girls !" 

I felt splendid, indeed. I had no time nor in- 
clination to think of nerves or stomachs; only 
of romance. The cure was working wonders. 
The Duke told me that I should strive to pass 
Adrienne on the street and receive a tiny smile 
of recognition from her. I succeeded in pass- 
ing her, but she did not smile — alas, no ! "That 
is most mysterious," mused the Duke. "Per- 
haps she does not know the European code 
about such matters. The thing for you to do 
now is to meet her." 






CURED 201 

He would arrange it. I dreaded meeting 
ladies, considering my nervous state, which is 
always exaggerated under such circumstances, 
but the Duke was inexorable. He arranged the 
meeting for Sunday morning. I took Adrienne 
driving. She looked more beautiful than ever. 
We talked of landscapes, trees, flowers and 
finally of roses. She showed herself amazingly 
clever, fencing on the subject of red roses. Her 
eyes shone with even greater brilliance than on 
the evening when I first looked into their great, 
bewildering depths. Finally, Adrienne ad- 
mitted receiving some American Beauties from 
"an unknown" admirer. 

"They had long stems- — oh, so long," she 
said. "I cut off the thorns and washed the 
stems— and wore two of the roses to a ball. My 
escort didn't send me any." 

Now I understood why she had not smiled. 
So she had worn the roses because of vanity 
and not romance ! 

"And the poem — did you read it?" I mur- 
mured, showing plainly my chagrin. 

"I did not understand all of it," she replied 
with some hesitation. Zounds, didn't she, a 
college girl, know any French ? I looked at her 
in surprise. She continued hurriedly: "The 



202 CURED 

silk was beautiful, but to be real romantic the 
poem ought to have been, not typewritten, but 
illumined." 

We drove home. All the way I thought of a 
sign I saw hung up in the study of my friend, 
the rector: "Cultivate Thought, Not Senti- 
ment." 

That night I played on my zither, but its 
strings refused to sing of the bliss, though they 
groaned out the sorrow, of love. I had walked 
on air but a few hours. Now I was back to 
heavy earth with a thud ! 

"There is no romance for one after thirty," I 
whispered to myself, awaiting sleep, which 
alone could prove of my troubles — 

"The sweet, the healing sedative/* 

The next day a feeling of great loneliness 
came over me. I thought of the past eight 
years; they had been long and sorrowful. I 
asked myself why I had traveled so many thou- 
sands of miles and lived in so many climes? 
Why had I met so many and remarkable people, 
from whom I had sought still more remarkable 
advice ? Why had I read so many books, maga- 
zines, newspapers, in a half dozen languages, 
seeking what was not to be found? Why, in- 






CURED 203 

cieed, had I worked so hard to accomplish so 
little? 

I went to Baltimore — "back, back, back to 
Bal-ti-more" — to consult my old friend, Dr. 
Jenkins, who had saved me from the surgeon's 
knife at that infirmary. I had confidence in 
him, even though he had been unable to direct 
me to the real cure for my mysterious ailment. 

"We must find out what is the matter with 
you," said Jenkins, gravely. "My advice is for 
you to go to the Hospital here for diag- 
nosis. You have tried so many things, it is 
useless to suggest remedies." On his assur- 
ance that there would be no surgery without his 
and my consent, I agreed. 

Soon after entering the great institution I 
found that there were "others" in this world 
seeking a diagnosis for mysterious and long- 
standing ills. In other words, the doctors of 
these patients did not know what was the mat- 
ter with them and they finally had confessed as 
much. I saw a chap who complained of a pain 
in his side. When he asked for medicine, the 
doctor answered: "No medicine until we find 
out what is the matter with you." This frank- 
ness filled me with confidence in the hospital 
and the hospital doctors. 



204 CURED 

A young medico was the first to find me in- 
teresting. He took my history. He wrote and 
wrote. I had a lot of fun telling him my travels. 
He wrote until his fountain pen was dry and 
then asked me if I had much more to say. I 
answered, "Oh, not more than fifty thousand 
words." That settled it. He took up a pencil 
and wrote, "and many other remarkable 
cures/' 

Another physician called on me. He made 
my knees jump; he tickled the soles of my feet 
and pressed on my stomach and liver. My 
pedal work seemed to please him; the more I 
yelped as he tickled me with straws on the soles 
of my feet (a torture I had read poor mission- 
aries occasionally suffered at the hands of sav- 
ages), the more pleased was this interne. He 
said I had been wrecked by excessive work and 
worry. Then a third doctor appeared. He 
found that my legs did not have the knee jerks 
as reported by the other doctors. This was a 
great discovery. Medico No. 2 was called and 
told of it. He replied he had seen them. "Well, 
they are not there now," said the third physi- 
cian. That night Medico No. 1, who took my 
history, extracted a drop of blood from my ear, 
which was wanted for analysis. 



CURED 205 



A fourth doctor arrived. I found out that he 
was also a diagnostician. He seemed to "con- 
cur in the decision/' as judges say. Then the 
seventieth cure began. It was to rest on the 
porch day and night, with packs every evening 
for one hundred nights. 

It appears that my first cure of a dozen ice 
packs lacked persistency. It should have been 
one hundred packs. Cure No. 70 seemed a 
combination of fresh air and ice. I did not 
rebel at the treatment, although the month was 
February. I was resigned. I was convinced 
that at this hospital they knew what to do for a 
man, and did it. I saw more physicians, Jen- 
kins among them. I overheard Jenkins whisper 
to one elderly colleague that I had a "most in- 
teresting stomach." And I heard that man 
whisper back, "You never can tell in these 
nervous cases just what form the stomach will 
assume." 

I received but little medicine. I slept well 
and I had a good appetite. I was allowed a 
light diet and I was not forced to eat anything 
I disliked. I lay for days on my back, my eyes 
closed. I seemed better. 

Then I heard an interesting news item, that 
the great Dr. Oxford would soon visit the hos- 



206 CURED 






pital. He had just returned from Europe and 
would visit some of us patients. "If Oxford 
cannot find out what is the matter with you," 
declared a rheumatic patient, "then you might 
as well give up all hope of a diagnosis, for he is 
never deceived. I have seen men brought in 
here, wasting away from some mysterious dis- 
ease that had baffled the skill of the medicos of 
the entire country. Oxford would walk up to 
them, take a good look, glance at their history 
and diagnose the case, whispering to the pa- 
tient, 'Don't worry, there are plenty of other 
fish in the sea as good/ And that's what had 
been the matter all the time — worry over some 
girl who had died or who had jilted the poor 
chap. Oxford spots 'em !" I was most anxious 
to meet Dr. Oxford; perhaps he could throw 
some light on my case. 

I heard more about Oxford. Another patient 
declared that great physician could diagnose 
the particular kind of dyspepsia three feet 
away, just by a glimpse of the patient's tongue; 
he was said to have diagnosed cases whilst he 
was on the doorstep and the patient up-stairs, 
just by hearing the patient cough or speak. He 
was the Napoleon of diagnosticians ! 

How well I remember the day that Oxford 






CURED 207 

was to visit the hospital ! Frantic efforts were 
made by the nurses to take every particle of 
dust away from chairs that Oxford might sit 
upon, and a night nurse was aroused at noon 
and told that she had left a bathroom in "fright- 
ful disorder"; the sponge was hanging on the 
nail which belonged to the flesh-brush. 

Oxford arrived. I caught a glimpse of him 
at noon. He was not a disappointment. He 
glided into the room with the grace of a Ger- 
man Kronprinz. He slid over the polished 
floors and his heels did not seem to leave it. 
Oxford had wonderful eyes, dark, big and of 
infinite depth. He had a high forehead, and 
despite his drooping moustache, which gave 
rather a sad look to his face, he had a pleasant 
smile. 

"Well, is this my horse ?" he said, shaking 
me by the hand. Then he addressed a score of 
physicians who accompanied him and said, 
"I've been told this fellow swallows air at times. 
Some horses have this habit and it is called 
cribbing. We call it 'serophagia/ In man it is 
a symptom of a serious nervous disorder. The 
best way to detect it, is to have the patient re- 
move his collar and watch his throat. You can 
then see if he swallows air. I have noticed air- 



208 CURED 

swallowing more frequently in the higher walks 
of life. Not infrequently it accompanies dys- 
pepsia. Sometimes the amount of air swal- 
lowed is enormous ; in these cases the best thing 
to do is to make the patient keep his mouth open 
and put a stick between his teeth — then he 
can't bite the air." 

I was gratified to hear that air-swallowing 
was a fashionable habit ; nevertheless, I desired 
very much to discard it. I swallowed air only 
under considerable excitement and the habit 
had been developed largely since visiting doc- 
tors. I was conscious of the choking, swallow- 
ing sensation in my throat when great people 
like Oxford visited me. Oxford read the eti- 
ology or history of my case and said, "Are you 
sure, doctors, that there is no stomach trouble 
here? I should think there would be!" He 
was assured that none could be discovered by 
test-meals, observation, stethoscopes, inflation 
or any other method. Oxford then pointed to 
the fact that I flushed easily, not only in the face 
but on the chest. "This man blushes on his 
chest," he said, smiling, as he studied me. Then 
he added, "Of course, rest outdoors is indi- 
cated, and also the tonic or tub bath in the 
morning; the packs at night. I should be very 



CURED 209 



careful not to use rough towels on this man's 
skin. It is too delicate/' Oxford wound up by 
declaring that he wished me to have a stomach 
bath every morning, to be continued for a 
month or more. Finally, smiling pleasantly and 
shaking me by the hand, he said in a deep voice, 
"Well, young man, what is the outlook ?" I re- 
plied I hoped to get well. He laughed. "You 
will have to lead the simple life hereafter !" he 
said. 

Then he left me, followed by the score of 
medical men. The idea of swallowing that 
tube every day was very unpleasant, but I soon 
learned that science had come to the aid of tube- 
swallowers. The rubber instrument of torture 
was kept on ice an hour before swallowing time, 
and I found that when very cold it did not cause 
that intense seasick feeling. I learned another 
trick, which was the right position of holding 
the head when swallowing the tube. Instead of 
bending forward as do Fletcherizers, while 
munching their food, awaiting the moment it 
will fade away, I had to lean way back. I could 
soon swallow the tube without difficulty. Many 
students, nurses and even doctors, came to see 
me take my morning meal of rubber, and all 
were delighted at my performance. After a 



210 CURED 

few weeks I seemed to improve, and Dr. Jen- 
kins asked me as a favor, both to him and to 
science, to attend a clinic, where I could be 
shown to students who would soon graduate. 
Of course, I consented ; it would be great fun. 
Clad in pajamas, a blanket and a pair of slippers 
on my feet, I was wheeled down to the lecture- 
room. There Jenkins, looking as wise as an 
owl, introduced me to the class of about fifteen. 
One of the students was a pretty, black-eyed 
girl, who hailed from Kentucky (as I after- 
wards ascertained). I made up my mind to 
raise no objection to her taking my pulse even 
if she were not yet a doctor. Jenkins laid me 
out on a couch with the skill of a "bag man" 
displaying his samples, and took off my pajama 
coat. I was not embarrassed, but the Kentucky 
girl flushed slightly as I gazed at her. Then I 
began to blush on my chest, whereupon Jenkins 
called attention to it. The students gathered 
around me whilst Jenkins discoursed on dilated 
stomachs. He wished to prove that a stomach 
may be dilated by the gaseous distension 
method without the stomach's being dilated 
permanently. 

It was the same old experiment, and the en- 
tire class laughed at the wry face I made when 



CURED 211 



I swallowed the second potion. Jenkins 
whipped out his stethoscope and prepared to 
take notes on the balloon ascension my stomach 
was about to make. But a surprising thing 
happened. I felt neither distension nor pain. 
No more than if I had taken a glass of soda! 
Jenkins told the class to listen to my stomach, 
and at once a whole battery of stethoscopes 
were thrown over the gastric border. But there 
was no violent distension. Jenkins, with a dis- 
appointed and surprised expression, admitted 
that the demonstration had been a failure. He 
whispered to me, "That's mighty good for you; 
you've improved a lot." Before letting me go, 
Jenkins showed the students how to demon- 
strate a stricture of the esophagus. He made 
me swallow a few ounces of water. With a 
stop-watch in hand and a stethoscope over my 
epigastrium, he noted the time it took before he 
heard the water "splash" into my stomach. 
Several of the students put their fingers on my 
throat as I swallowed, and I experienced a pe- 
culiar thrill as the beautiful Kentuckian 
touched me under the ear. One of the students 
was not satisfied with the "splash" the water 
made when it reached the stomach and said, 



212 CURED 



"Doctor, the noise is not what it is cracked up 
to be." 

After a month, the stomach lavage was dis- 
continued, for fear of starting an ulcer, said the 
interne. I continued to flush without apparent 
cause, but my weight remained satisfactory, 
142 pounds without clothes. After three 
months of complete inactivity I was allowed to 
sit up, but as soon as I began to walk, I felt the 
blood rushing to my head. Dr. Jenkins called 
on me one day, and said, "If your stomach con- 
tinues to bother you, why not cut it out ?" Then 
I feared I was in for a surgical operation. I 
discussed the matter with the interne and he 
thought an exploratory operation might be nec- 
essary. In fact, the doctors had almost agreed 
to have me go under the knife. 

But a sudden and unforseen development 
changed their plans and removed the Damocles 
sword that hung over my stomach. It was all 
due to a thunderstorm. The time of year was 
spring; the storm came up suddenly. The 
thunder was terrible. I became exceedingly 
nervous, and after a particularly loud clap of 
thunder I began to swallow air in bucketfuls. 
The interne was with me at the time; he coun- 
seled me to open my mouth and keep it open. 



CURED 213 

Then he sat on my bed and laughed for several 
minutes, exclaiming, "No surgery for you, my 
man; this thunderstorm proves that your 
stomach trouble arises from nervousness \" 

Before I was again turned loose, I was sent 
to the oculist of the hospital. The ophthalmic 
man made a very careful examination. He said 
I was a little nearsighted, but there was no as- 
tigmatism, the reputed cause of so many nerv- 
ous ills. He did not put drops in my eyes to 
paralyze the accommodating muscle which 
always tries to hide the astigmatic defects of 
the eye ; he said such a procedure was not nec- 
essary in my case. 

I was allowed to leave the hospital. The doc- 
tors declared that my case no longer baffled 
them. I was suffering from nervous dyspep- 
sia; the nerves were responsible for the stom- 
ach ailment. But how to cure the nervous dys- 
pepsia remained to be seen. A few doctors of- 
fered suggestions, but I could always say, 
"Why, I have done that." 

The cause of all my misery was still a mys- 
tery; but, thank God, no surgeon was "this 
mystery to explore." 



CHAPTER XIV 
Preparing for the End, I Find the Real Cure. 

FOR the next few days I read Ven. Thomas 
a Kempis. I reflected on my physical ills, 
which had resisted all treatment. If Ox- 
ford, the world-famed diagnostician, could not 
direct me to a cure, who could? Seventy of 
these alleged cures had been lavished upon my 
frail tenement of clay — and to no avail ! 

I found myself a prisoner in the camp of real 
and imaginary foes. In the morning I was af- 
flicted with depression following a night of dis- 
turbed and unref reshing sleep. During the day 
I suffered with morbid heats and flushes, coup- 
led with muscular weakness and proneness to 
fatigue. Again and again I thought of my 
strange fears — the fright of being in a crowd, 
the sense of malaise when alone, and the pro- 
nounced dread of "things falling'' when I 
passed a high building. And those "fidgets," 
culminating in a fury of irritation and a sense 
of oppression — they had ever been enemies 

lurking in the dark to harass me. 

(214) 



CURED 215 

I asked myself if my various symptoms and 
manifestations, which had baffled scientific, un- 
scientific and fashionable physicians to relieve, 
did not really mask some organic disease? I 
felt that a crisis had been reached. This jour- 
ney in quest of the cure could not last much 
longer. My vitality, as well as my finances, 
neared "exhausting depletion." 

From Thomas a Kempis I borrowed these 
words of consolation, writing them on a slip of 
paper and pasting them in a corner of my 
mirror : 

"I cannot fly from tribulation, but must of neces- 
sity fly to Thee, that Thou mayest help me and turn 
it to good." 

While I thus prepared for the inevitable, I 
happened one day to meet a great explorer, who 
told me of the dangers he had braved in the 
four corners of the earth and who described 
how he, too, had prepared for death. While 
walking with him I was seized with that "all- 
gone" sensation in the stomach and was forced 
from sheer weakness to sit down in the road. 
My companion asked me if he could do any- 
thing to help me. I told him I had tried every- 
thing known to science, but that I seemed in- 
curable and was only awaiting death. 



216 CURED 



He counseled me to go to the table-lands of 
the great Southwest and with the aid of ozone 
and sunlight retard the march of the Grim 
Reaper. 

That night I thought over the suggestion and 
weighed the chances for prolonging my life. I 
realized that the city, with its boasted comforts 
of civilization, had become a burden to me in 
my state of wretched health. I was in a cage. 
I yearned for the freedom of some remote place, 
far from railroads and telegraph wires. In a 
far-away place I could continue my struggle un- 
noticed. I thought of what a comfort it would 
be to escape the sight of so many healthy men 
and women, endowed with splendid nerves — 
nerves that I lacked! What a relief to get 
away from their merciless, scrutinizing gaze, 
directed at my pallid, drawn, emaciated fea- 
tures. I should no longer see that sudden look 
of alarm they gave me — the look I had seen 
given criminals when the death sentence was 
pronounced upon them. 

To far-away New Mexico, land of sunshine 
and oxygenized air, I should go, to struggle for 
very life itself. 

I called on my friend, the Duke, to tell him 
of my intention. I found him gazing at a 



CURED 217 

picture. His eyes were red. "I, too, must 
leave," he said, in a choking voice — "leave 
her." 

The Duke asked me if I would help pack his 
pictures. While we were at work one of the 
Duke's friends, Fred Townsend, dropped in to 
see him. He watched us wrap the fair beauties, 
one by one, and entertained us with stories of 
his travels, He had been all over Mexico, New 
and Old. "I went there because I was in bad 
health," he added. "I was so sick at times that 
I used to fall from my horse in a dead faint." 

"Did life in the open air, in the saddle, and 
all that kind of thing, not help you?" I asked, 
with a momentary flash of interest. 

"It was merely palliative," he replied. 
"When I returned to civilization my nervous 
troubles came with me." 

"And you are now cured?" I asked, noticing 
his look of health. 

"Yes, I'm cured — cured at last," he said, 
with a sigh of relief. "I can sit still for hours 
— a luxury I did not enjoy for over four years." 

Here was a man who had had the "fidgets !" 

"How were you cured?" I almost shouted. 

Mr. Townsend pointed to his glasses and 
added : "A great oculist here did the miracle — 



218 CURED 



and in three weeks. He has been called the 
'Good Samaritan' and also 'Sherlock Holmes/ 
He is a wizard when it comes to curing dyspep- 
sia, nervous troubles and many other diseases 
due to the eyes." 

What an absurd story, I thought. The idea 
of a pair of glasses curing a chronic nervous 
disorder ! I wore glasses, too, and they did not 
cure me. I asked Townsend why my glasses 
did not work the miracle. 

"You need the right ones, I suppose/' he re- 
plied. "I hear there are ten million people in 
the United States wearing glasses and yet few 
of these glasses are adjusted accurately to the 
needs of the eye. Didn't you read that article 
in the Good Housekeeping Magazine, by Alger- 
non Tassin, on 'Why Our Glasses Don't Fit' ?" 

I admitted that I had not. 

"And have you not heard that the strain on 
the eye resulting from no glasses or from de- 
fective glasses does not usually show itself in 
the eye, but in other parts of the body in the 
form of heart trouble, indigestion, headaches, 
despondency, irritability, asthma, insomnia, 
and even criminal tendencies, and a thousand 
other ailments?" 

"I have read many medical works, quite a 



CURED 219 

number on the stomach," I replied, "and I did 
not see any statement of astigmatism causing 
ill health. I remember very well that there is 
no mention of eye-strain in the work on 'The 
Stomach' which discussed so elaborately the 
treatment of all forms of dyspepsia." 

"No," replied Townsend, "and it may be 
fifty years before even the majority of oculists 
recognize the importance of accurate refraction 
of the eye to get the sick back to health and to 
keep them well. I went to a supposedly 'great 
oculist' in Chicago, who charged me $20 a visit 
and who failed to put the right glasses on me." 

"How did you know they were not the right 
ones?" I asked. 

"Because I continued to have fainting spells 
and this terrible nervousness." 

Townsend counseled me to see his oculist and 
said that the great man was moderate in his 
charges — $10 for. a series of visits, or until the 
proper prescription for glasses had been made. 

That night I pondered over Townsend's 
strange cure. Did it not sound like a miracle? 
But was he not mistaken? I was convinced 
that in my case new glasses could do me no 
good. Had not the great medicos at the great 
Baltimore hospital examined my eyes with 



220 CURED 

other parts of my anatomy and had they not 
said my eyes were all right? 

It would be useless for me to consult this 
Sherlock Holmes. Once and for all I had de- 
termined to "shun all doctors'' — just as the 
great cardinal had advised. I should pack up 
and leave for a mountain-side in far-away New 
Mexico. There I would enjoy the sunshine by 
day and the on-coming brilliance of the stars at 
night — thus to await the end. 

So I tendered my resignation to the manag- 
ing editor of our paper, to take effect one month 
from that date. 

While I prepared for my journey to New 
Mexico I had several visits from Townsend, 
who begged me at least to see this miracle- 
worker before leaving for the Southwest. But 
I had lost all faith in doctors and in "cures." 

One day I took luncheon with a Catholic 
priest, a man of fine intellect, rugged health and 
classic features. I asked him if he had ever 
met Townsend's oculist. "No," he replied, "but 
I have heard of him. That wonderful man 
cured a little boy in my parish who was sup- 
posed to be an incurable epileptic. He put a 
pair of glasses on him and the boy was all right 



CURED 221 



in twenty-four hours, and the cure has stood 
the test of time." 

My curiosity was excited. I decided to in- 
vestigate. On the way to the oculist's home I 
met a man, who confided to me that he was also 
seeking a cure for nerves. "I have a most dis- 
tressing malady," he explained; "every time I 
ride in a cab I have to jump out." 

"Do you think this place is a Lourdes?" I 
asked. 

"Well, I can't say, but many of my friends 
have been cured." 

The doctor's waiting-room was crowded 
with patients, most of them ladies. My, what 
big pupils their eyes had! I remarked this to 
my jumping companion. 

"It is due to atropine," he whispered. "We, 
too, will get our drops." 

But I was so restless I could not wait for my 
turn. As I started out I ran right into the doc- 
tor, a tall man, straight as an arrow, with a 
gray Van Dyke beard and eyes which twinkled 
behind spectacles. 

"What's the matter with you?" he asked, 
looking at me curiously. 

"I have nervous dyspepsia," I replied hur- 
riedly. 



222 CURED 



"Who told you that?" he asked, with a smile 
of incredulity. 

"Dr. Oxford, the world's greatest diagnos- 
tician," I answered breezily, expecting to see 
him crushed. 

"He did, did he?" exclaimed the oculist, 
laughing. "And did he tell you that ninety-five 
per cent, of nervous dyspepsia is due to the 
eyes. You look as though you had eye-strain, 
my boy." 

Then he asked me how long it was since I 
had my glasses changed. I told him seven or 
eight years and added that the doctors at the 
famous hospital told me that I did not need a 
change of glasses. 

"Seven or eight years!" exclaimed the ocu- 
list. "Then you ought to have eye-strain! 
Glasses should be changed every three years up 
to the age of fifty-two; after that, every two 
years." 

I wondered if this man knew what he was 
talking about ? If he did, then I had been a vic- 
tim of a terrible mistake. 

I returned the next day, had drops put in my 
eyes and in less than one hour the great oculist 
exclaimed: "Astigmatism in both eyes" 



CURED 223 



"And what is astigmatism ?" I asked, bewil- 
dered. 

"Astigmatism is a faulty curvature of the 
front part of the eye, the cornea, ,, he replied, 
"which causes a badly focussed picture on the 
retina of everything seen. The imperfect vision 
resulting and the striving to overcome it, or 
compensate for it, causes eye-strain. And it 
doesn't end there. It produces much sickness 
of the nervous system, mind and body, which 
can be prevented or cured only by scientific 
spectacles." 

"The eye, then, is " I began. 

"A projection of that king of the nervous 
system, the brain itself," the oculist interposed. 
"Being of royalty it is able to pass on its taxes 
and afflictions to lowlier organs — to the throat, 
the lungs, the stomach, or the liver, etc." 

"But how does the eye do this ?" I asked. 

"It is the mystery of the nervous system," he 
replied. "That you have escaped headaches is 
remarkable ; but you have had stomach distress 
and shattered nerves instead." 

Then I thought of what Townsend had told 
me about eye-strain not usually showing itself 
in the eye. 



224 CURED 

I told the great oculist some of my cures and 
of my adventures with certain doctors. 

"You have met not a few quacks," he re- 
marked, with a look of disgust. 

"All — except my Chiro man — had Latin di- 
plomas on their walls," I retorted. 

We returned to eyes. "It is folly to try to 
get an accurate knowledge of the eye without 
paralyzing the accommodating muscle," con- 
tinued the oculist. "That is why even oculists 
failed to find astigmatism in your case." 

He gave me a prescription for glasses, and I 
was impressed with the great care he took to see 
that it was filled accurately. In three days I 
was wearing the new glasses. But my fidgets 
and my other ills continued. "You won't find 
a cure in twenty-four hours," the doctor said in 
an encouraging tone. "It will take three weeks 
at least before you note any great difference." 

After two weeks some of my friends re- 
marked : "You are not so nervous as you used 
to be. What is the cure ?" I said nothing, as- 
suring myself that the glasses were merely pal- 
liative. No more false hopes for me ! 

When I returned to the oculist to say fare- 
well he gave me some advice about shunning 
"nose-pinching glasses," which he termed "the 



CURED 225 

abomination of this age, due to vanity/' and 
said they were injurious as the eyes usually do 
not see through the center of the glass. He 
warned me to keep my spectacles tilted, with the 
center of the glass opposite the center of the 
pupil, and to shade my eyes in the glare of New 
Mexico's skies. 

"I feel a little better," I remarked. 

"You will continue to improve if you take 
care of your eyes," predicted the oculist. He 
came out to the door and looked peeringly into 
them. "Great Scott, but they have changed!" 
he cried. "When you came here the first time 
you looked like a wild man — I was afraid of 
you." 

"I was extremely nervous after eight years 
of battle," I replied. 

I told all of my friends good-bye and started 
for New Mexico. In Chicago, I had a few 
hours. I forgot all about nerves and dyspepsia 
and ate a hearty meal at a restaurant. It did 
not trouble me. Passing the Princess Theatre 
I saw the sign: "Matinee." How I yearned to 
enter, but it had been over eight years since I 
could sit through a performance — so restless 
and fidgety did I feel. Then it occurred to me 
to make a test of the new "cure," for it was just 



226 CURED 



three weeks since I had tried glasses — or three 
weeks and four days. 

There was not a single end-seat left — the 
kind of seat the restless desire at a theatre. So 
I took what I could get and was sandwiched in 
between a dozen matinee girls. 

It was a delightful performance, with lots of 
romance and mystery, love and red roses, with 
Sallie Fischer as the star. Act after act rolled 
by and at the last scene I was still in my seat 
without a fidget, or a tremor. Indeed, in every 
joint, in every muscle, in every nerve, I felt "the 
soul serenity sensation." 

As the curtain fell for the last time, I jumped 
out of my seat and fairly shouted with joy: 
"I am cured!" The matinee girls near me 
looked bewildered as though a madman had ac- 
costed them. 

I ran down the steps and rushed into the box 
office, up to the man who who had sold me the 
ticket. Ringing him warmly by the hand, I 
exclaimed : "I am cured." He looked at me in 
amazement. 

Out in the streets a newsboy offered me an 
"extra." I embraced him as I gave him a dol- 
lar. "I am cured at last," I said by way of ex- 
planation, as he seemed stunned with surprise. 




'Out in the streets a newsboy offered me an 'extra.' I 

embraced him as I gave him a dollar. _ 7 am 

cured at last,' I said by way of explanation, 

as he seemed stunned with surprise." 



CURED 227 

I could have hugged anybody I met on the 
streets I felt so happy, so wildly happy — for 
after eight long years experimenting with doc- 
tors and cures I had finally found the really 
scientific man of my dreams; after taking 
seventy unavailing cures, I was cured at last! 



CHAPTER XV 
Four Years Afterward, and Still Cured. 

HERE I am in the Great Southwest, where 
I was to have died — and, behold, I live. 
Here, where I was to have ended my 
days, they seem only just to have begun. For 
it is now over four years since I bought my 
ticket for New Mexico. I have been able to re- 
sume newspaper work, toiling day and night, 
reading proof and writing at great speed. I 
have lived under skies so bright that they would 
injure most eyes, unless they were in first-class 
working shape. Yet I have enjoyed those four 
years. I have been able to sit still and rest. My 
soul has clothed itself with serenity; my tene- 
ment of clay has been filled with "poise, peace 
and power." And my stomach — I no longer 
think about it! 

To what do I owe it all? To a couple of in- 
significant bits of glass (to me, very signifi- 
cant), placed in proper relation to my eyes! 

I look back with incredulity at those eight 
years of hysterical health-hunting, in which I 

(228) 



CURED 229 



was not cured, but. overcured. Ah, fatal hour 
when I entered the first infirmary! From a 
comparatively healthy, if tired, young man, I 
became the plaything of every doctor's fad and 
every faddist's fancy, until at last I was re- 
duced to a physical and nervous wreck. 

I watch sadly the crowds of suffering hu- 
manity who still travel to mineral waters, who 
are still practiced upon, and who even succumb 
to the surgeon's knife. It is for the sake of my 
friends, known and unknown, who still wander 
the earth in search of a cure, that I have been 
tempted to write my experiences. 

Dear Reader, may you find your "bits of 
glass," and may some really scientific man ad- 
just them to your nose ! 



The End. 



CONCORDANCE 



Accommodating muscle, 224. 
Acid dyspepsia, 15, 18. 
Adenoids, 177. 
Advice, cost of medical, 104. 
Aerophagia, 207. 

how cured, 208. 

how detected, 207. 

Aesthetic life, 193. 
Air, 159. 

cold, 58. 

■ mile up in the, 28. 

mountain, 14. 

salt, 14. 

swallowing of, 26, 37, 207. 

therapeutic, value of, 80. 

All-gone-feeling, 107. 

Alternating cold-hot baths, 45. 

Apepsia, 49. 

Arteries, closing up of, 88. 

Ascetic life, 193. 

Assimilation, 142, 143. 

Asthma, 218. 

Astigmatism, 213, 219, 222, 223, 224. 

Atonic dyspepsia, 49, 114. 

Atropine, 221. 

Autointoxication, 43, 51. 

antidotes for, 43 to 56. 

Baby stare, 197. 

Bag-punching, 187. 

Baked apple, diet of, 38. 

Baking, 43, 44. 

Balsam, 164. 

Barber chair repose, 173 to 176. 

Baths, alternating, hot-cold, 45. 

circulatory, 45. 

danger of cold, 34. 

dew, 126. 

electric light, 44. 

Eskimo snow, 74. 

Kneipp dew, 126. 

needle, 134. 

(231) 



232 CONCORDANCE 



Baths, olive oil, 140, 141, 142. 

power of cold, 168. 

rain, 120. 

Russian or vapor, 45. 

stomach, 19 to 23. 

sun, 85, 86, 87. 

sweat, 44. 

tub, 208. 

when contraindicated, 106. 

Battle Creek idea, 42. 

Beating, 46. 

Beef, raw, 30. 

Benedict, St., 95. 

Ben Hut cure, 166. 

Berger, Mme. Kitty, 155. 

Bicycle riding, 146. 

Black coffee, 118, 119. 

Blindness, how cured by a barber, 175. 

Blood, thickening of, 60, 61. 

Blushing, morbid attacks of, 110. 

on chest, 208. 

Boiling, 43. 
Booze, 26. 

fighting the, 31. 

Bread, danger of, 32. 

dry, 49. 

Breathing, art of, 159. 
Blight's disease, cure of, 42. 

Caesar, 180. 

California wines, 43. 

Call, Miss Anna Payson, 120, 121. 

Cancer of stomach, 18, 55. 

Cannon ball massage, 142, 143. 

Cardinal, advice of a dyspeptic, 125. 

Change of scenery, 136. 

Charcoal, 53. 

Chewing, importance of, 51. 

Chickens, 25. 

Chiropractic, science of, 97. 

Chiropractitioner, 96. 

Chloroform, 26. 

Cigarettes, 194. 

Circulatory baths, 45. 

Claret, 31. 

Clothes, 79. 

Clothing, not necessary to wear, 80. 



CONCORDANCE 233 



Cocaine, 137. 
Coffee, 43. 

black, 118, 119. 

Cold air cure, 58. 

Condiments, 43. 

Consumption, curious cause of, 178. 

Control, 171. 

Cornaro, story of Count, 63. 

Counting, value of, 117. 

Country hotel life, 14. 

Cribbing of air, 207. 

Cure, the real, 227. 

Dance, St. Vitus, 168. 

Dancing, why it is not fatiguing, 152. 

Dante, 46. 

Dead game sport life, 193. 

Depletion, exhausting, 167. 

Depression, 214. 

Despondency, 218. 

Developing the primitive muscles, 119. 

Devil, did he cause fidgets? 95. 

Diagnosis, 203. 

Diefenbach, 80. 

Diet, fruit, 49. 

light, 29. 

milk, 29, 30. 

nitrogenous, 36. 

the dry, 52. 

Digestion, buccal, 51. 

Dilatation of stomach, 23, 111, 112. 

Dilated stomach treatment, 110. 

Diplomas, Latin, 224. 

Disease, mysterious, 206. 

Distension of stomach, 35, 36, 37. 

Disturbed sleep, 214. 

Doctors, danger of, 125, 196. 

Dog biscuit, 51. 

Dore, 46. 

Dressing, folly of, 79. 

Drops in the eyes, 213, 221. 

Dumas, 31. 

Duodenitis, 35. 

Dyspepsia, acid, 15, 18. 

atonic, 18, 114. 

nervous, 107 to 111. 

tablets for, 16. 



234 CONCORDANCE 






Ears, ringing in, 176. 
Egg, peptonized, 89. 

white of, 49. 

Electric massage, 46. 
Elizabeth, Empress, 155. 
Epigastrium, distress in, 15, 37, 109. 
Epilepsy, how cured, 220. 
Eskimo baths, 74. 
Esophagus, stricture of, 211. 
Etiquette, hospital, 13. 
Exploratory operation, 113, 212. 
Eye, a projection of the brain, 223. 
Eyebrows, musical, 197. 

the recherche, 197. 

Eyelashes, long and velvety, 197. 
Eyes, bulging, inquiring, 31. 

ideal, romantic, 197. 

influence of, on health, 218. 

pain in, 26. 

the X-ray, 55. 

Eye-strain, 218, 219, 222, 223. 

Fainting spells, 217, 219. 
Fanning, habit of, 129. 
Fat, 171, 172. 

conflict of love and, 178. 

how to become, 178. 

Fears, strange, 214. 

Fenugreek seed, 178, 180. 

Fermentation, 30, 32. 

Fidgets, 95, 174, 214, 217, 224. 

Fish, danger of eating, 43. 

Fletcher, Mr. Horace, 51, 74, 179. 

Fletcherizers, 209. 

Fletcherizing, 52. 

Flirts, baby stare of, 197. 

Flush, cause of, 208. 

Food, nitrogenous, 36. 

Foot, 126. 

Foreign travel cure, 162, 163. 

Fresh water swirnming, 168. 

Fruits, harmless, 49. 

subacid, 42. 



Gases, precious, of mineral water, 17. 
Georgia pines, 134. 



CONCORDANCE 235 



Glasses, 217, 218, 219. 

change of, 222. 

nose-pinching, 224. 

sale of, 135. 

Gout, 44. 
Guitar, 155. 
Guttzeit, 80. 



Hard labor, 88. 
Hardtack, 51. 
Harp, 153, 154. 
Headaches, 218, 223. 
Health foods, 41. 
Health, Key to, 32. 
Heart, thumping of, 13. 
Heart trouble, 218. 
Hearty eating, sin of, 44. 
High life, 130. 
Hippocrates, 1(58. 
Horace, 153. 

Hospital, etiquette of, 13. 
Hospital, life in, 30. 
Hubbard, Mr. Elbert, 149. 
Hunger hike, 51. 
Hydrochloric acid, 49, 76. 
Hydrotherapeutics, 168. 
Hyperpepsia, 48, 74. 
Hypnotized state, 130. 
Hypochondria, 76. 
Hypodermic, 15, 26, 136. 
Hypopepsia, 48. 



Ice, effect of, on stomach tube, 209. 
Ice bag, 76. 
Indigestion, 218. 

acute, 38. 

Infirmary, 14. 
Insomnia, 194, 218. 
Introspection, antidote for, 153. 
Inunctions, olive oil, 140, 142. 
Irregularity, value of, 194. 
Irritability, 214, 218. 

Jerks, how to diagnose the, 106. 
Jumping sickness, 221. 



236 CONCORDANCE 



Kaiser Wilhelm and King Edward baths, 44. 
Kempis, Thomas a, 214, 215. 
Kneipp dew baths, 126. 

Labor, hard, 88. 

Lazy life, 14. 

Lectual look, 151. 

Legs, development of, 146. 

Life in the saddle, 68 to 72. 

Light work, 25. 

Lincoln, 180. 

Liver trouble, 38. 

a dilated, 73, 108. 

Lizard, swallowing of, 186. 
Loneliness, feeling of, 202. 
Lorelei, 157. 



Magnesia, 109. 

Malaria, 27. 

Mandolin, 155. 

11 Manifestations, new morbid," 169. 

Marathon running, 165. 

Margarita, Queen, 155. 

Mark Twain, 131. 

Massage, cannon ball, 142, 143. 

electric, 46. 

Swedish, 46, 47. 

wooden ball, 143. 

Matrimony, value of fat for, 179. 
Meals, five a day, 108, 109. 

square, 37, 38. 

Meat, 32, 33. 

danger of, 43. 

Milk diet, 29, 30. 
Mock chicken, 41. 
Montana, cold air of, 59, 60. 
Morphine, 136. 

when fatal, 137. 

Mountains, 14. 

Muscles, the primitive, 119. 

Music, effect of, on weariness, 152. 

martial, 151, 158. 

object of all, 154. 

stimulating power of, 151. 

syncopated, 152. 



CONCORDANCE 237 



Music, therapeutic value of, 152. 
Mystery, a woman dearly loves a, 199. 

Nagel, Gustav, 80. 

Naked cult, 80. 

Napoleon, 180. 

Nature cure, 79. 

Neptune's girdle, 53 to 56. 

Nerves, influence of, on stomach, 82, 83. 

Nervous dyspepsia, 11, 107, 213, 221, 222. 

Nervous system, 34. 

Neurasthenia, 182, 183. 

Neuroses, value of music in, 153. 

New Mexico, 216, 217, 220, 225, 228. 

Next to nature, 78, 79, 80, 84. 

Nitrogenous diet, 108. 

No worry, 117. 

Nose, 177. 

Nose bleed, 28. 

Nurse, hatched-faced, 29. 

Juno type of, 13. 

petite brown-eyed, 12. 

Nux vomica, 13, 181. 

Oculists, 219. 
Oil, olive, 140, 141. 
Operation, an exploratory, 113. 
Organic trouble, 42. 
Overcured, 229. 

Packs, the wet sheet, 12, 205. 
Paderewski, 148. 
Pain, a shooting, 30. 
Patti, Mme., 155. 
Pawlow, discoveries of, 31. 
Peruna, 25, 26, 31. 
Physician, duty of a, 15, 137. 
Piano, 154. 

grand, 191. 

Pickles, 43. 

Pines, South Georgia, 134. 

Placid life, 172. 

Poise, 150. 

Pores, outing for the, 79, 80, 84. 

Powders, use of, 30. 

Power through repose, 120 to 124. 

Predigested food, 41. 

Pressure effect of, on catarrh of the colon, 100. 



238 CONCORDANCE 



Pressure effect of, on colds, 101. 

on diabetes, 100. 

on dyspepsia, 99. 

on rheumatism, 100. 

on typhoid, 99. 

Priessnitz, 53. 
Primitive muscles, 119. 
Prosperity, road to, 180, 181. 
Psychic condition, 130. 
Pylorus, 114. 

Quacks, 224. 
Quake, a gastric, 38. 

Ragging, 152. 

Rain baths, 120. 

Rattlesnake fright, 91, 92, 93. 

Refraction, accurate, 219. 

Relax, how to, 120 to 124. 

Repose, power through, 120. 

Rest in bed, 107. 

Rigid, holding the muscles, 124. 

Romance, 196, 197, 202. 

Roof sun baths, 85 to 87. 

Roosevelt Ranch Life, 66. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 63, 66, 69, 73, 150. 

Rowing, 166, 167. 

Rowing machines, 187. 

Rub, the alcohol dorsal, 109. 

Rubber hands, 52. 

Running, 165. 

Russian baths, 45. 

St. Benedict, 95. 

St. Vitus dance, 31, 168. 

Sage, Russel, 173. 

Salisbury meat cure, 32. 

Salt baths, 16. 

Salubrious Georgia Pines, 134. 

Saul and David, 152. 

Scalpel wielders, 112. 

Scientific man, 227. 

Scientist, a great, 37. 

Seashore, 14. 

Sea voyage, 116. 

Self -analysis, cure for, 153. 

Serenity of soul, 149. 

Shakespeare, 82, 83, 156, 180. 



CONCORDANCE 239 



Shock, value of, 93. 

Sign language, 184. 

Silence cure, 182, 183. 

Simple life, 209. 

Sitting still, 164, 217, 228. 

Skin, a proper covering, 79, 86. 

Smile, the Sphinxic, 13. 

Society cure, 129. 

Solar plexus, derangement of, 81. 

Soul serenity, 226. 

Spanking machine, 46. 

Spare ribs, 108. 

Spectacles, scientific, 223. 

Spices, 43. 

Spine, sunlight on, 86. 

Sport, a dead game, 193. 

Square meals, 62. 

Stair climbing, 188. 

Starch, poisonous effect of, 32. 

Starvation, 50. 

Stethoscope, 34, 52, 211. 

Stomach, dilatation of, 18, 111, 210. 

prolapse of, 52, 111. 

splashing sound in, 17, 24. 

washing of, 19, 209. 

Stomach robber, 186. 

Stomach tube, use and abuse of, 19, 24, 65, 209. 

use of, with electric light, 83. 

Stuffing cure, 108. 

Sulphur springs, 16. 

Sunlight, value of, 86. 

Surgeons, fear of, 115. 

Surgery, 111. 

Swamp Root, 42. 

Swimming, 168. 

Symptoms, danger of aggravating, 166. 

recital of, 38. 

Tablets, cachexia, 37. 
Talking, tax of, on vitality, 182. 
Tassin, Mr. Algernon, 218. 
Tea, 43. 
Tennyson, 164. 
Test meal, 48, 110. 

how analyzed, 82. 

Throat, lump in, 116. 
Thunderstorm, effect of, 212, 213. 
Tinnitus aurium, 176. 



240 CONCORDANCE 



Tissues, the broken-down, 50. 
Tobacco, 43. 
Tonics, 24, 27, 42. 
Tonsils, 20, 177. 
Travel, 137. 

foreign, 162, 163. 

Tremor, 226. 

Trollope, Anthony, 155. 

Tub bath, 208. 

Tunis Fenugreek seed, 178, 180. 

Tunis maidens, 179. 

Twain, Mark, 131. 

Ulcer, a stomach, 212. 

Umschlag, or Neptune's girdle, 54. 

Uric acid, 43. 

Vegetarian nations, 33. 
Vegetarians, 33. 
Verne, Jules, 170. 
Vertebrae, 110. 

luxated, 97, 106. 

Vibrator, the electric, 46. 
Violin, 155. 
Violoncello, 155. 
Virchow, Dr. Rudolph, 86. 
Voice, the singing, 160, 161. 

the speaking, 161. 

Vulcanized rubber hands, 52, 53. 

Walking, value of, 116, 117. 
Wallace, Lew, 166. 
Washington high life, 130 to 133. 
Water, air and, 50. 

meat and, 32, 33. 

Weakness, muscular, 214. 

Weariness, music a cure for, 152. 

Wet sheet pack, 12, 208. 

Wolsey, Cardinal, and dyspepsia, 83. 

Wooden balls, 143. 

Work cure, 66. 

Work, light, 25. 

Worry, folly of, 117. 

Wrists, weakness in, 110. 

X-Ray eyes, 55. 

Zither, 155, 156, 157, 158, 202. 



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